


Dewer's Bane

by apeirophobia



Series: Fallen From Grace [1]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band), Pacific Rim (2013), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Drift Bond, F/M, Gen, M/M, Scott and Stiles are Brothers, Team Hot Dads, Yancy Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:31:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apeirophobia/pseuds/apeirophobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kaiju crawl out of the ocean, Sydney's Shatterdome has a new prodigy, and the PPDC is more desperate than ever for people who are Drift-compatible.</p><p>(It's 2022, Scott and Stiles have a Jaeger named Dewer's Bane, and the world has been ending for nine years)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is just the prologue! :D

All Jaeger pilots feel that they were born to drift but, sometimes, Scott feels like he was born _in_ the drift. Some people say the first time they drift it’s like going live, a shock to the system. Taking in all this new information, learning another person like they’re yourself, can be overwhelming. But Scott already _has_ all of Stiles’ memories, just from a different vantage point. He’s been the right hemisphere, the right ventricle, the more cautious half of his best friend for as long as he can properly remember. Stiles’ heart skips a beat and Scott’s breath catches in his throat, Scott gets an idea and a mischievous grin spreads across Stiles’ face, and it’s all cause and reaction tied up so tightly that neither Scott nor Stiles know which is which anymore. Honestly, to be completely in-sync with Stiles inside a giant robot seems like the logical progression of their relationship.

 

The first time Scott drifts with Stiles it feels like coming home.


	2. A logical decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everybody who left kudos (or bookmarks! :), you guys rock! Please enjoy! :D
> 
> Story Note ~ I went with the fairly unanimous assumption that Sheriff Stilinski's first name is John.

[In the beginning...]

 

It really all starts with Ms. Mcall. Of course it does. Melissa Mcall is mom extraordinaire, professional boo-boo kisser turned highly sought after medical professional. And Scott at seven years old would be perfectly happy if his mom only had to split her attention between him and his brother, but the world is ending and they’re calling for nurses and suddenly Scott’s mom is in high demand for a lot more than hugs and bedtime stories. And it’s not just the Army and the elementary schools-turned-emergency-shelters and the rescue teams who need anyone who can wrap a wound or tend the sick: it’s the Jaeger program. It’s Hong Kong. A copy of the public service announcement is posted by the elevators when Melissa gets to work on Friday night. It’s a memo from the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, and they’re calling for people in medical professions, law enforcement, and certain athletic fields to contact them if they’re interested in over-seas employment. The Shatterdome in Hong Kong is said to be only the first of many. Financed by the U.N., it houses those immense fighting robots that Scott and Stiles are so fond of. “ _Jaegers_ , Mom.” Scott always corrects when she calls them that, “Yeah, _Jaegers_. Not robots.” Stiles adds, and Melissa smiles at the memory and thinks, _anything to aid mankind, anything to fight the Kaiju._ It’s not just ambition, solid employment, and the opportunity to help save the world that entices Melissa; it’s free medical insurance _and_ access to military grade bunkers in the event of a Kaiju attack. And it’s not an _if_ , it’s a _when_. Melissa doesn’t know exactly what is happening, but she knows that it is out of her control and she will do anything to protect her son, her _boys_ , from this new threat, even if it means taking them closer to the war front. Weighing her options, she looks the note over again and thinks, _when the whole world’s a storm, the eye might be the safest place_. Decision made, she texts John on her work break.

 

Scott is at school taking a spelling test when his mom gives her notice at the hospital, and he comes home to his things half packed and his bed stripped bare. It’s the first time in his life he can recall feeling truly _lost_. Before this moment the war, the _end of the world_ , had just been on TV, something that’s happening somewhere else and maybe not at all. The Jaegers are heros, the Kaiju are bad-guys, and if not for the men on the news with their big words and their grave faces, they could be just another Saturday morning cartoon. The Pan-Pacific situation is something vague, like the next towns’ weather, that doesn’t really affect Scott at all. But now his mom is putting boarding passes and snacks in his batman backpack and turning in the keys to their apartment, and Scott feels like he needs his inhaler even though he hasn’t been running around, or roughhousing with Stiles. _Stiles!_ The panic must show on Scott’s face, because Melissa pauses halfway through buckling his car-seat, ( _booster seat_ , Scott always insists, whenever in the presence of any kids who aren’t Stiles. Best friends are allowed to know the sordid truth, that you still use a car seat at age seven. Besides, Stiles’ dad makes him sit in one too. The Sheriff has too much experience with rules and cautionary tales to ever let Stiles be cool.)

 

“Hey, hey, sweetie, what’s wrong?” Scott’s mom says, running her fingers through his hair in a soothing manner, worried at his sudden quiet and paleness. 

 

“What’s going to happen to Stiles?” Scott says frantically, because he’s scared he won’t be seeing his best friend for a really long time, (an unimaginable fate for the pair, and for a first-grader it’s definitely crisis material) 

 

“What about the Sheriff?” he asks, too caught up in his increasingly distressing imagination to notice as Melissa lets out a laugh that is equal parts relieved, exasperated, and amused, because her son got his tendency to worry from her, but also, because Scott was obviously not listening to her earlier beyond “moving” and “job” and “Hong Kong”.

 

“Scott. Look at me.” Melissa says, and she’s using her “ _nurse_ mom” voice now, not just her “ _mom_ mom” one, “Stiles and his dad are fine. They’re meeting us at the ferry in half an hour.”

 

“They’re coming with us?” Scott says with belated excitement, as realization breaks through his panic.

 

“Of course they are,” his moms says slowly, and the _“Why would you think any differently?”_ is implied, but Scott hears it loud and clear.

 

“Oh.” says Scott, suddenly feeling silly for thinking his mom would run off to another country and leave Stiles and the Sheriff behind.

 

“Oh,” Melissa repeats, completely nonplused, “ _Oh_ , says the drama llama once his fears are assuaged.”

 

Scott grins, shaking his head bashfully, as his mom starts the car.

 

“You weren’t listening, were you?” His mom says, smiling at him in the review mirror.

 

“Maybe?” Scott says, grinning cheesily and lying terribly.

“You’re a silly boy,” his mom says with a laugh.

Scott hums happily in agreement and twists around in his carseat to get one last look at the apartment he called home for the first seven and a half years of his life. He liked living there but it doesn’t make him sad to leave because they’re taking all the “home” with them. His clothes and his bath toys are all packed up, his stuffed Kaiju plushie is on the seat next to him, and Stiles and Stiles’ dad are coming with them. Scott sits back with a content sigh. As long as he has his people, his family, everything is fine.


	3. Brothers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your lovely comments and kudos :D I was so pleased to get any feedback at all, I was afraid that my story would get ignored by the TW fandom, cause it isn't Sterek, so you all made my day! :D

Hong Kong is awesome. Like _awesome_ awesome, with a capitol WOW. The days in between continents, from the ferry to the concord to the U.S. Embassy, pass by in a blur until one day Scott wakes up to find that jet lag has lost its grip. He leans over his bed railing (Scott got the top bunk despite being younger by half a year because Stiles moves too much in his sleep to be safe at any height) to see if Stiles is awake yet.

The older boy is lying with his arms behind his head, staring into space, thinking. He smiles when he sees that Scott is awake.

 

“This is pretty exciting, isn’t it?” Stiles asks, and Scott’s not entirely sure if he means sleeping in a bunk bed, or having a room of their own, or just the whole move in general. Regardless, he responds by nodding enthusiastically.

 

Tucking his favorite stuffed Kaiju, Karloff, under his arm, Scott climbs down from the top bunk. Stiles pulls back his covers and scoots over so Scott can get in beside him.

 

“You wanna know what I heard mom and dad talking about, when they thought we were sleeping?” Stiles asks, snuggling down in his covers conspiratorially.

 

“What?” Scott asks curiously, following Stiles’ example and burrowing down in the covers too.

 

Stiles eyes light up excitedly, “They were talking about _getting married_.” he says with a grin.

 

“What?!” Scott practically squeaks, and Stiles’ grin widens. It’s not totally _unexpected_ , really, it was practically inevitable. But it’s shocking in the way that getting a good thing you wanted and hoped for is, in that you’re still startled when it happens, and pleasantly surprised.

 

Stiles and Scott lie in the dark for a moment, thinking about what it will be like when their parents are married, if it will change anything at all. Scott doesn’t have very distinct memories of his biological father, the man left when Scott was very young. Any memories that came after, of just him and his mom, or of Stiles and the Sheriff, seem to take precedence in his mind. There was a time in-between, after his dad left but before Stiles and his father became part of their lives, but now it seems so long ago, and very quiet. The present seems much more alluring, and much more complete.

Stiles has only good memories of his mother. She was a tall pretty woman and she always smelled like chocolate-chip cookies. Or maybe Stiles remembers her that way because baking was one of his favorite things to do with her, or because it was his last strong memory of spending time with his mother. Just the two of them, baking a cake for his dad before he got home from work. All Stiles really knows is that she was warm and kind and loving, and that she went away very quickly. He went to bed one day and woke up too late the next, and she was gone. After that everything seemed off in his life, and his dad didn’t act quite right. It was only when Stiles met Scott, and hence Melissa met John, that things started to feel _normal_ again. It was a little while after that that Stiles’ dad begin smiling again; smiling like Stiles had forgotten he _could_.

His train of thought derails slightly when Scott nuzzles Karloff against Stiles’ cheek and growls lightly. Stiles just laughs and growls back with his own Kaiju, a bright fuchsia version of Kaiceph.

 

“We’re gonna really be brothers now.” Scott says, hushed but contemplative. 

 

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees, “it’s gonna be really cool.”

 

“Does this mean we’re twins?” Scott asks.

 

“Scott! Don’t be silly, we can’t be twins, I’m six months and a week older than you.” Stiles admonishes, with a little laugh in his voice.

 

Scott just cuddled closer and said, “So...we’re gonna be half-twins then.” 

 

Stiles chuckles, trying to keep quiet, and Scott nods his head mock-seriously, as if he had discovered the definitive answer.

 

When Stile’s dad comes to wake them for breakfast later he finds too little boys wrapped up tight in blankets, still giggling.

* * *

Melissa and John are married in the fall, when Scott is eight and Stiles is almost nine. They have a small military ceremony, officiated by the newly appointed Marshall Pentecost. Scott, in his first proper suit, acts as the ring-bearer and Stiles, through sheer determination and persistence, achieves the title of “ flower boy” and performs his role with jubilance. Mako Mori, the Marshall’s daughter, serves as the objective witness for the couple's union. She looks exceedingly pretty in her red and white kimono and, at age ten, acts with a level of maturity the brothers aren’t sure they will ever achieve. Stiles takes one look at her blue hair and serious, bordering-on-angry nature and is in love.

Mr. Stilinski-Mcall kisses the bride, no one objects, and everyone cheers. Herc Hansen, who stepped into the chapel, fresh off patrol, to morally support his best friend's first attempt at officiating, ends up staying for the reception when Mako hugs him around the waist and demands that he dance with her. After the ceremony the Marshall kisses Melissa on the hand and tells her she looks beautiful, to which Scott and Stiles enthusiastically agree. Then Scott curiously watches his mom and dad shove cake in each other's faces while Stiles throws leftover rose petals in the air.

 

Later, when Melissa tosses her bouquet to the crowd of five it quickly devolves into a wrestling match between Scott, Stiles, and Mako.

 

Mako wins.

 


	4. Code-K

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you lovelies, Dojikko and astrospace, for reviewing! Reviews totally make my day :D And thank you everybody who's been reading & kudoing!

There are always tons of people running around the Hong Kong Shatterdome and, more often than not, they are literally running. A Kaiju hits shore somewhere in the world every six months, on average, and when that happens the men and women of the HKS report to battle stations. Melissa, having passed and then taught a course on the appropriate handling of Kaiju-blue exposure and how to treat Drift-gone-wrong injuries, reports to the med bay whenever the warning system sounds a red-alert. The Sheriff (who isn’t actually a Sheriff anymore, he’s just _Dad_ now, and, well, if “Sheriff” means “protective leader of a group” then it’s kind of the same thing anyway, isn’t it?) assists with the evacuation of any non-personnel and then organizes his security team, Phi 3, to set up a perimeter around the West end of the deployment hanger. The Shatterdome is as large and complex as the city it protects and when a Kaiju comes out of the breach it goes into total lock-down.

Scott only cries once, during the first attack. The sirens are going off and they’re frightening, loud bellowing alarms threatening to bust their eardrums, and lights are flashing red and white, making it hard to focus, making it hard to see the glow of the emergency treads that line the corridor and mark the path to the underground bunker. Stiles runs his hands along the concrete wall for balance, trying to make his way down the hallway, and Scott fists his hand in the back of his brother’s hoodie, lest they get separated in the crowd. Only children and non-immediate personal go to the bunkers during an attack but the hallway is still packed, the crowd tense and most of its occupants twice their size, with an underlying tension that suggests if Scott or Stiles misstep they might find themselves trampled.

They sit in the dark, eighty-four feet and seven stories down, bathed in the eerie greenish glow of emergency non-lighting. Scott closes his eyes and tries to breath. He squeezes Stiles’ hand and Stiles squeezes back. Scott can hear his brother’s panicked breaths in the dark, like thoughts in his head, and thinks _it’s fine, we’re fine_ , like he can reassure Stiles via telepathy. But Scott can still remember San Francisco and Trespasser and the way the earth shook all the way in Beacon Hills when the bombs dropped and he doesn’t quite believe his own mantra. Scott can feel Stiles’ fear and worry for their parents’ safety like he can feel the warmth of Stiles’ shoulder through his sweatshirt and the wet of tears on his own face. Scott never has to ask for Stiles to understand anything; he was there when K-Day happened, he knows what happens when the ground shakes.

“Hey!--kid!” someone half-whispers, half-shouts from just down the queue.

 

Beside him Stiles bristles and Scott doesn’t know what exactly the boy means by _kid_ , ‘cause the boy might be bigger, likes those kids that play on the traveling soccer team and push you when the teacher’s not looking, but he can’t be more than a couple of years older than Scott and Stiles.

“Why are you crying?” the boy asks curiously when Scott turns to look at him, like they’re just engaging in an easy conversation.

“He’s just scared,” Stiles says, defensive, and Scott tries to wipe his eyes.

 

“This is our first Code-K without our mom and dad,” he explains, and gestures to the ceiling of their bunker, “they’re up on the surface, first-responders.” 

 

The older boy nods sagely, like he deems that a reasonable enough excuse for crying during a Code-K, then his face grows hard.

“Let me tell you something.” he says, leaning forward, stance aggressive and voice serious, “If the Kaiju get here, if they get your mum and dad, it’s cause my Dad’s failed, and that’s not gonna happen.” and he sounds pompous, but so sure. His accent thickens with an undercurrent of emotion and he sounds just the tiniest bit threatened, almost offended at the insinuation that his Dad could fail, even though Scott and Stiles never said such a thing, like their fear is insulting to him.

 

“Your dad fights the Kaiju?” Scott asks, and for some reason he’d never thought of Jaeger pilots as having kids and lives and stuff, even though he knows that the Marshall used to pilot Coyote Tango, and it seems highly silly in retrospect, to think of them as heroes instead of _people_.

The boy nods his head, sullen jaw jutting out aggressively, and says, “Dad and Uncle Scott have killed every Kaiju they’ve gone up against,” and there’s a touch of pride in his voice, but mostly anger.

“Wow, your Dad and Uncle pilot a Jaeger?” Stiles asks, completely ignoring the older boy’s antagonistic posturing, and Scott can feel his fear start to dissipate and be replaced by intrigued. Scott also knows Stiles is feeling an inkling of competition in the “awesome parents” category. 

 

Going off the earlier hint of an accent, Stiles asks, “Vulcan, or Lucky?”

 

The boy’s green eyes seem to flash when he turns, caught off-guard, and Stiles knows that he guessed correctly when he says, “They run Lucky Seven outta the Sydney Shatterdome, yeah.”

Stiles grins in response and in the glow-green light of the bunker it looks macabre. Scott looks the boy, who --now that it’s been said-- is obviously a Hansen, over appraisingly and thinks, _your father danced with the Marshall’s daughter at my parent’s wedding_. It’s a surreal thought for a surreal moment. It’s the end of the world and his mom is the happiest she’s ever been, he’s sitting in the dark with his brother and the son of one of the world’s best Jaeger pilots, and all their parents are fighting for the future of the human race. Sometimes Scott feels that his life can get no stranger, and other times he feels that simply nothing can surprise him. Sometimes Scott feels like he's lived a lot longer than eight years.

 

"That's just for now, though," Hansen continues, "a couple of more years, I’ll show them." and by the steel in his voice Scott doesn't know if by 'them' he means his family, or the Kaiju. "My ol’ dad will hold down the fort 'til I'm old enough to take over.”

 

Scott and Stiles share a look and what passes between them is nothing like a fully formed thought, it’s an understanding, the beginning of an idea. In a couple of years Stiles will be old enough to train at the academy and Scott won’t be far behind.

 

Hopefully this cocky kid, his badass dad, and uncle don’t kill all the Kaijus before they get there.

* * *

 

Two years later the doors open on the Los Angeles Shatterdome. Three years later Scott and Stiles jet lag themselves back to North America and enroll in the PPDC training program. On their first day theystumble, literally, into the practice room ready and willing to get their asses handed to them on the Kwoon mats. Ready to split their minds and bend their bodies, willing to do their part to end the war.

Recent graduate and Jaeger prodigy Chuck Hansen doesn’t seem surprised to see them at all.


	5. Ku Alere

“Yo, disco pigs, move over,” Jackson says, sliding onto the bench next to Scott. It’s five in the morning and Scott is exhausted to the point of getting his own name wrong. (and it’s not quite an exaggeration, one time while filling out paperwork Scott completely blanked on whether his last name was “Stilinski-Mcall” or “Mcall-Stilinski” and he stared at the form for ten minutes before caving and asking Stiles) Jackson and Danny are eating in the Canteen with the _Stilinski-Mcall_ brothers, and Scott isn’t sure whether his muscles ache from being out of bed when it’s too damn early or being out of bed when it’s too damn _late_.

 

Year seven of the Kaiju war and sometimes Scott feels like he’s permanently drifting, like he’s fading in and out, static on a radio, and he finds himself reaching for Stiles in the dark, arm stretching down from the top bunk, looking for anything to ground him in the here and now. It’s always a relief to find Stiles’ hand reaching back.

 

“So I heard you guys just got cleared for rough-drifting,” Danny says, and Stiles looks up from his bacon and nutella crepes, a smile spreading across his messy face.

 

“Damn right we are.” Stiles says, and grins at Scott. Scott grins back involuntarily, he’s been on a giddy high ever since Marshall Pentecost gave the order, and he wonders if this is how Stiles feels all the time, like he's always on the edge of vibrating into pieces with his manic amounts of energy.

 

“Congratulations,” Jackson says sincerely, and Scott nods his head in response. Everybody knows that once you’re cleared for rough-drifting you’re practically home clear. From here on it’s only a matter of time (and politics) until Scott and Stiles are assigned a Jaeger. And unless it happens in the next six weeks they’re all but guaranteed a _new_ Jaeger, a Mark IV. For once Scott is holding his breath that something _doesn’t_ happen in the timeliest manner possible. But _when_ Stiles and Scott get their hypothetical Jaeger, they know they’ll be partnered in a defensive position to Jackson and Danny’s offensive position. Jackson and Danny’s approval means almost more than the Marshall’s does, since Stiles and Scott have pretty much been deemed officially worthy to watch their back.

 

“Yeah,” Danny agrees, continuing Jackson’s train of thought, “It’ll be a big relief to have you out there. Not that we don’t love the occasional multi-Jaeger drop,-- and here Jackson and Danny roll their eyes in perfect exasperated unison -- “but it’ll be nice to have a consistent team and not so much of the whole “Oh, your back-up is that weird pair from Canada that thinks the best defense is a good offense”, or Tendo having to translate our transmissions mid-deployment, cause we’re assisting a Jaeger team that speaks two different languages, and neither of them is any of the three we speak.”

 

“You love Tendo,” Jackson says, fondly, and there’s more than just a teasing edge to his voice. Danny doesn't argue the point.

 

"Matador Fury?” Stiles asks with a wry smile.

 

Danny and Jackson nod before lamenting, bemusedly, about the time they assisted a couple of ex-cons (who still maintain their innocence) in the takedown of a category II that was particularly slimy and evasive.

Scott closes his eyes and feels himself start to fade again.

* * *

Danny and Jackson are the youngest Jaeger pair currently operating out of the LA Shatterdome. Their combined age is fairly comparable to the Beckets’ age when they started piloting out of Anchorage. Every year the board says they are gonna cut down, they are gonna make some regulations, pressing needs be damned, so that babies and barely legals stop making the final cut of the Jaeger Program. And yet, every year, someone steps into the conn-pod who’s too young to see an R-rated movie on their own. Jackson Whittemore was fifteen the first time he sparred with Danny _Mahealani_ , fifteen and a half when he graduated to Ranger. He celebrated his sweet sixteen with a Category III kill. Chuck Hansen has him beat as the youngest graduate by three months and Jackson is still kind of hung up on that fact. Danny consoles him with the fact that Chuck has to pilot with his _Dad_ , which is kind of like killing Kaiju with your learner’s permit. Neither Whittemore nor Hansen actually have their driver’s license yet, but that’s beside the point. Danny says the world is most likely going to end soon and they won’t need them anyways, a fact that Jackson finds more comforting than he probably should.

 

Jackson is a perfectionist. Everybody knows this, and Jackson would never attempt to deny it. But these past couple of months there’s been a calm settling in the back of his mind; he’s been quicker to smile and slower to anger. He’s still sarcastic as hell and a bit more aggressive than one might expect a left-hemisphere pilot to be, but he’s _happy_. It’s the end of the world and there are people depending on him to not fuck up and the pressure is constantly building (and who even needs giant robots when you can fight monsters with Marshall Pentecost’s patented look of “stern disappointment” because, dear God, if Jackson was a category-freakin'-five he'd still turn around and _nope_ back into the breach if he popped out of the ocean and saw the Marshall standing there with that look of grave condemnation) but Jackson, for once, doesn't feel like a total failure. Maybe it's because he and his best friend (and Matador Fury) saved a peninsula that housed six million people, but more likely it's because there is literally no time to doubt yourself. Jackson feels like he  _fits_ here, he has a  _purpose_ , and that makes life more bearable than it has been in a long time, possibly forever.

 

Danny has never been a perfectionist. Back home, on Oahu before K-day, he went to high school and was, well, _normal_. He built little machines and robots, kid stuff nowhere on the level of a Jaeger-prototype, just stuff for fun, and got in a little too over his head when his hacking-for-lols attracted the attention of some higher-ups. People called him a genius, but he just always thought of himself as a teenager, as a son, as Noa and Mali's older brother. Someone who remembered his name gave him a call eleven months later. They asked him what his test scores were, what kinds of things he was good at besides illegally accessing files with sensitive information, whether he liked to play any sports. He told them he was pretty good at sneaking into over-21 clubs and he'd placed in surfing competitions growing up. Nearly a year after his unofficial arrest someone knocked on the front door of his family's condo (their safe, fortified, relocation home) on the mainland.  Danny has always been curious. Curiosity was what led him to try hacking files that were  _legally_ out of his reach, and curiosity is what leads him to saying yes to the Shatterdome officer who shakes his father's hand and answers his mother's tearful questions. Danny Mahealani has never been a perfectionist, but it turns out that he might just be perfect for the Jaeger Academy. Originally, his instructors want him to be some type of protege for Tendo Choi, but once he'd laid eyes on Gipsy Danger (who, at the time, had been under major repair in the hangar) he'd thought  _I want one_ , and it had been game over for practicality and game on for pilot training.

 

Jackson Whittemore and Danny Mahealani meet on the center mats of the Kwoon room when Danny is seventeen. Before either boy has scored more than two points Danny is already pondering names for a Mark III. They call a draw after fifteen minutes and Ku Alere is commissioned eight months later. He's run on high-strung perfection, brutal perseverance, and strategy mostly learned from video games.

 

Ku is a warrior and when Jackson and Danny move together, other-worldly cries cut short as Kaiju blue slips between their metal fingers, they are too.

* * *

Scott fades back in to Stiles saying, “Hey man, don’t diss my crush, my mom says the Beckets are ‘nice boys’. Total mom approval, you can’t touch this.” 

 

Stiles nods, uber-seriously, and Jackson and Danny lose their composure, snickering at Stiles’ serious tone. Whatever conversation Scott tuned out of, things clearly had taken a turn for the ridiculous. But Jackson and Danny are smiling despite their exhaustion and Stiles is just getting warmed up.

 

There _might_ be a poster of the Beckets on the wall over Scott and Stiles’ bunk. And on that possible poster someone might have, ironically, drawn a big red heart around Yancy Becket’s face. Allegedly. And then someone else might have realized that that heart wasn’t entirely ironic, so they left it up.

 

“I’m just saying _maybe_ they’re not my type,” Danny says, waving his hands in a frantic, yet placating, manner.

 

Stiles face-palms and clutches his forehead, muttering to himself, _Beckets_ , and _n_ _ot his type_ , like he can’t understand the words.

 

Jackson laughs into his oatmeal and Scott knows he’s frontin’ for all he’s worth. Everyone has, or has had at some point, a crush on the Beckets. It’s pretty much a law of the Shatterdome world, like the PPDC equivalent of gravity. And  _t_ _his_ is the other Shatterdome law of reality: Rangers can maintain their neural bridge and act mature for hours when on a drop. But give them food and sleep-depravation and they will quickly spiral downward into increasingly heated debates about the most frivolous of things. In fact, Stiles could probably get into a row over someone referring to his love for the Beckets as  _being_ frivolous.

Scott leans across the table and lays a hand on Jackson’s arm, consolingly, and says, “It’s okay to admit it to us, Jacks, we’ve all been there.”

“What do you _mean_ not your type? What part of great abs and amazing per--”

Jackson grins at Scott and says, "Might want to put your left hemisphere to bed, before he hurts himself."

Scott laughs and agrees, standing up and tugging on Stiles' shoulders. Here in the cafeteria, with his feet on the metal floor and his fingers bunched in his brother's hoodie, he feels more present than ever. Here it seems hard to believe that he's been fading, randomly, and without intent or control. Here, with Stiles warm and solid beside him, it doesn't seem that big of a concern at all.

* * *

The pipes in the walls of corridor 14, the corridor Stiles and Scott live down, groan as the brothers walk back to their room. Shatterdomes are never quiet and they never sleep. Behind iron doors, sheets rustle and showers turn on announcing the awakening of the Alpha-shift. 

“Oh, you know,” says Stiles, when Scott asks him exactly what transpired while he was having an out-of-body experience, “we were just discussing which Becket we thought was dreamier.”

 

"And that escalated into what? Hysteria over Whittemore not giving up his boner flag for the Russians? You knew that never going to happen."

Back in their room, Stiles is sitting on his bunk and pulling off his boots. He still looks pissed. Scott is starting to think what he caught the tail-end of was more than the usual conservation Jackson and Stiles always had, where they talked shit about each other's faves (and each other). Jackson is possibly the Kaidonovsky's biggest fan in the whole of North America while Stiles has an infinite list of reasons why you should love America's Golden Boys and it's the same old, same old. Scott and Danny's left-side counterparts usually go at it about once a week. They are friends, they all are, but Stiles and Jackson are the antagonistic sort and it seems to work as a way for them to let off steam.

"And I said, well Raleigh is obviously "the charming one" as all the teen magazines like to point out, but I find Yancy to be more heroic 'cause he returned to piloting despite all the surgeries and the physical therapy he had to endure after the Knifehead catastrophe."

Scott, who's brushing his teeth, makes a humming sound of agreement from over by the sink. He remembered Mom saying how the human body isn't supposed to survive that many critical surgeries, isn't supposed to take that much pain, and the modifications the elder Becket had been outfitted with were no joke. She was privy to more details than most since the PPDC medical board insisted on documenting the 'case' closely. Yancy Becket had set precedent. No one had ever sustained that much deep tissue damage without bleeding to death from shattered bone, let alone put themselves back together enough to get back in a Jaeger. No one really knew how the Beckets managed to Drift again. Or how _Raleigh_ managed it. Vicarious trauma is still trauma, and both Beckets had it in spades. Rumour had it that the Marshall gave the Beckets, like, occlumency lessons or something to keep them from burning down the Anchorage Shatterdome in their first post-Knifehead Drifts.

 

Stiles sighs, hand over his eyes, lying flat on his back with one standard-issue sock clad foot on his pillow. Scott leans against the bathroom door and mirrors the expression. The two have rough-Drifted exactly five times but they started to mimic and assimilate each other's moods after two. Maybe it's because they're brothers, maybe it's because they're best friends. Maybe it's because they're really, really good at this. (Or maybe it's because Stiles and his feelings ricochet off the walls of Scott's mind hard enough to leave dents.)

 

"Jackson said he didn't go for boys who weren't all organic." Stiles says pointedly, looking up at Scott from where he's still lying on his bed, and oh,  _oh shit_ , those were fighting words afterall. It seemed like such a flippant statement and yet it single-handedly belied Jackson's serious insecurity about his own mortality and dismissed the worth of a national hero.

 

 _Damn_ , Scott says under his breath, or maybe he just thinks it. Either way Stiles hears it. He lifts an eyebrow in response, as to say,  _I know right?_

Scott trusts Jackson with his life, in the only way one Ranger can trust another. And Scott really likes Danny and Danny loves Jackson, so Jackson's got, like, the grandfather clause of approval, but  _shit_ that Whittemore can be a dick sometimes. Maybe, Scott thinks, "Youngest Ranger" isn't the only superlative at which Jackson Whittemore is attempting to beat Chuck Hansen. Go figure.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to everybody who's been reading and leaving comments and kudos! It always makes me smile, and I really appreciate it! :D


	6. Scar Tissue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live a Yancy!lives appreciation life. I also live an explore-the-negative-ramifications-of-Scott-Hansen's-actions appreciation life, so there'll be more of that in later chapters. A little bit of backstory on what changed after the battle of Knifehead. Also, this chapter contains references to what Scott Hansen did (rape) to get kicked out of the Jaeger Program.

The year is 2021 and Jaeger pilots are neither rock stars, nor gods. Too many close calls in the past year and pubic opinion is a fickle bitch. When Gipsy collapsed to her knees on that Alaskan beach the previous February, both Beckets proved themselves to be human. Raleigh fell into a coma in the arms of a good Samaritan, Yancy coded on the floor of a fishing boat’s cabin, and the media responded with scorn. The Beckets were America’s Golden Boys, the nation _adored_ them, and it’s only natural to cover hurt with anger. The heros of the Jaeger age turned out to be human afterall and the only question on every news station was _Whose fault was it?_ as if the Beckets were just two kids who defied orders for the hell of it, as if the fault lay with two young men who went out of their way to do _good_ instead of just “better” and not with the 4 ton alien that literally chewed them up and spat them back out. As if they didn’t save seventeen lives and pay with their innocence and their sanity.

A friend of Mom’s, one of her trainees from the early days in Hong Kong, was on call in Anchorage when the emergency responders brought Yancy in and it was just...bad. Most of his injuries were from being thrown, from hitting surface tension at the velocity of a car crash, but there were deep puncture wounds where teeth had torn through muscle and metal, only stopping where they met bone. Half of his drive-suit was intact, the other half had been pried off by the fisherman who had performed initial chest compressions, and the parts of his torso that had been spared permanent impressions of his circuitry suit had burns from where Knifehead’s saliva had made contact with his skin. Between the hypothermia, the internal bleeding, and the shock Yancy Becket was an attending surgeon's worst nightmare. Luckily the PPDC has never been in the business of hiring the timid, whether for the front-lines or for the operating theatre.

* * *

Yancy is alive enough to feel the needle enter his thigh, but not conscious enough to flinch. The epinephrine cocktail feels cold inside his arteries and then it’s like someone turned up the volume on his brain and suddenly he’s aware of _everything_. Gloved hands adjust the oxygen mask on his face, a weight presses against his shoulders as restraints are tightened, and the man who’s splinting his right leg is wearing off-brand cologne. He can feel the meds spreading, can feel the shiver under his skin as his blood starts to race in response, but he can’t feel his right leg or his right arm or _Raleigh_ in his head  where he’s supposed to be and then he’s screaming himself hoarse, an answer to the echo of his brother screaming his name. Nurses and doctors talk around him, snatches of _heavy dose for his age and weight_ and _risking fatal tachycardia_ and _keep pressure on that_ but all he can hear is the pressing silence of the Drift. He’s awake, even if artificially so, and painfully alive and Raleigh is. not. there.

 

The doctors try to keep him awake and alert. They don’t let him fall asleep, to do so would risk him never waking up again. Drift injuries can result in all kinds of unpredictable physical maladies. Sometimes your brain bleeds, sometimes your heart stops without any warning. Hercules Hansen fell into a coma for three days after the neural bridge he shared with his brother crashed. Yancy’s teeth clench and his toes curl in the after-shocks of his and Raleigh’s torn neural bridge. It’s agony. Only the medical restraints, pulled tight across his shoulders and hips, and the fact that most of his limbs are either bound or medicinally paralyzed, or _both_ , keep his spine from arching in pain.

There is a difference between _crashing_ a neural bridge and _tearing_ one, of course. ‘Crashing’ is a violent act of repulsion. Pilots who’ve accidently fallen into their partner’s worst memories have been known to pull away from the Drift, even in the heat of battle. ‘Crashing’ is what happens when you witness your brother assaulting an underage girl in the Drift. ‘Tearing’ is what happens when you are literally torn out of the conn-pod mid-sentence. ‘Crashing’ is what happens when you try to push your little brother out of your mind and wake up with drivesuit burns in all the places he bruised her. ‘Tearing’ is what happens when your heart stops in the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean and your brother feels you die. _Crashing_ is a misdirected instinct of self-preservation while _tearing_ is an involuntary loss. Hercules Hansen has Drifted with six people and Scott Hansen is the only one who left him with scars he couldn’t cover up. In the Anchorage Medbay, February of 2020, Yancy’s vitals are shaky and Raleigh is nowhere to be found. In the spaces each other’s souls have left in the other’s mind, scar tissue begins to form. The Beckets will Drift again, but they will never be the same.

* * *

The year is 2021 and Scott and his brother step into the conn-pod for their first official drop. Their girl _Dewer’s Bane_ is a defense model, meaning she has less flashy weapons, but more resistance and firepower. She’s made to be the last obstacle between the Kaiju and the mainland. Scott says, _she’s not made to kill, she’s made to save lives_ , at the press conference, when the reporters ask: _What is it like, piloting such an immense deadly weapon?_ and Stiles and Scott smile identical “I’m so earnest” smiles, cause the press loves it when they suck up like that. It’s been thirteen months since the fall, since Knifehead, and Jaeger pilots are neither rock stars, or gods, but they are soldiers and the public needs them, even if they no longer worship them. When the cameras turn off Scott leans over and bumps shoulders with Stiles, smiles a private smile, and Stiles shakes his head. He smiles in return and shakes his head, laughing at a joke Scott didn’t tell.

_Bane_ is not _made_ to kill, that much is true, but she will. Scott knows it and Stiles knows it. They are not the first-wave, responding to immediate threats with bombs and evacs and fear of the unknown. They are not Mach I pilots; the outlandishly brave survivors who went on to be pillars of the Jaeger community. They are not even second-wave noble boys like the Beckets and the Wei Tangs, who signed up because the world was ending and what else could they do? No, they are quotas filled and fully briefed. They do not have the luxury, nor the hindrance, of hope. There is no fine print in their contracts. By the time Scott and Stiles step into their first neural handshake the world has been ending for some time. The risks are known; it’s ‘go big or go home’, with the understanding that if you don’t “go big” there will be no home to go _to_. And Scott thinks of the first time he heard the phrase “Drift compatible”, then thinks of the first time he and Stiles thought _maybe we have a real shot at this_. They are Mach IV pilots, and they are soldiers, but under that they are just kids sitting in the dark during a Code-K praying that their parents are okay. There’s a _want_ there, a need to protect what they could never stand to lose. It’s the pure and simple selfishness of love, and it’s the strongest thing they Drift on. They do not fight for the safety of their homeland, or the great of the world. Scott and Stiles are honest enough with themselves to admit that they will never be that badass. They are also honest enough to admit that they will probably die trying.

* * *

In Anchorage, in February, Raleigh’s location and condition are finally called in, twenty minutes and four hours after Yancy is declared stable enough to enter surgery and eight hours after he, Yancy, Gipsy Danger and Knifehead went off Tendo’s radar screen.

 

Raleigh succumbs to unconscious in the arms of a stranger at 1200 hours. Yancy, who is conscious but drugged to the point of non-responsive, falls asleep with a peaceful look on his face at 1201.

 

The morning headlines call the man on the beach a hero. The same headlines call Gipsy Danger a failure. 

 

The civilian masses don’t like it when their gods bleed.

 


	7. the gifts that war gives us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everybody for all the lovely comments I've been getting! Sorry this story is taking a little while, the holidays have been quite busy. I will try my best to get the next couple of chapters out in a timely manner.
> 
> Also, I did not use the "Underage" warning because there are no laws being broken, but just a head's up that Peter and Lydia are married in this story, and Lydia is 16 while Peter is an adult (in his twenties).
> 
> <3

Los Angeles Shatterdome, 3 a.m. The medbay is quiet and Dr. Mcall-Stilinski’s hands are steady as she stitches the gash on Hercules Hansen’s forehead closed. The former Ranger looks very pale under the examination lights and Melissa can feel him shake lightly beneath her gloved fingertips.

 

Earlier that day, when what was supposed to be a simple errand into the city stretched from two hours to three and a half, the Marshall began calling every local contact he had. Hercules Hansen is, if nothing else, an extremely dependable and competent man. Any possibilities of what could have derailed his outing were not good. The owner of a shop downtown called, four hours after Pentecost expected Herc’s return, and stated, quite briskly, that he had an ex-Ranger bleeding on his foyer carpet (a fact he did not really appreciate) and could someone please remove him? Apparently injured PPDC personnel in your shop were almost as bad for business as two dead cultists in the street outside, which they also had.

 

“Better you than them,” Melissa says, whiles she swabs his fingertips with alcohol. Herc’s second, fourth, and ninth fingers are now missing their nails. She paints them in iodine before wrapping them in gauze to prevent infection.

 

The edges of Herc’s mouth quirk into what, if it weren’t so tired, might be a smile, and he says, “Better two Kaiju worshippers dead then alive.” 

 

It’s only the Hippocratic Oath that keeps Melissa from agreeing.

 

Herc doesn’t say _they were going to kill me._ He doesn’t say _they hate_ ** _us_** _so much_. Everyone knows that tension is rising, it has been since before Knifehead, before Manila. Every decision made and action taken in the past eighteen months has been a controversial one, and Herc knows that they’re no longer playing with the public’s affections, they’re actively playing _against_ them. But what is the alternative? The cultists would have them lay down and die. They want humanity to surrender and accept the Kaijus’ destruction. At the other extreme, the media wishes the Rangers in the spotlight to be infallible. They want the pilots to kill Kaiju and bow for the cameras and never ever bleed. The Kaiju Cultists want them to give up and the public wants them to give up their humanity. Neither is an option.

 

The taut-pinch tug of metal and medical floss under his skin is not a foreign feeling to Herc, being a Jaeger Program test-pilot amassed him a fair share of stitches, but it's not every day that you almost die. And in this life, the life of a post-K PPDC boeuf, it's a certain kind of surreal to almost meet your end at the hands of another human being. The stark reminder of what little humanity some of the activists have shakes Herc more than he cares to admit. _These_ are the people his own children risk their lives to save. These  _fanatics_ , who would be pleased if the world ended tomorrow, seek to turn the tide in the Kaiju's favor by shanking high-tiered PPDC personnel. His team and his family will not give up the planet, not to a bunch of religious nuts and certainly not to a bunch of monsters from another world. They have giant robots  _and_ Stacker Pentecost on their side, dammit, and Herc might be a tad (or extremely) biased, but he'd say they'd still stand a chance of canceling the apocalypse with just the latter. He wonders if that means he's extremely trusting or foolishly devoted. Or whether it just means the lidocaine Melissa gave him is wearing away at his more eloquent internal capabilities of rhetoric.

 

"You should have seen him," Melissa says, snapping off her right latex glove and giving Herc a wry smile.

 

It takes Herc a moment to think _who?_ before he recalls the look of utter relief on Stacker's bloodless face when Herc regained consciousness. Then he thinks that the shock must be wearing off because everything is starting to get a little fuzzy and slow. His hands are still shaking but his eyelids are starting to close of their own volition. Also, he can't quite feel his face from the cheekbones up and it is a strange sensation. He thinks of Chuck, in Japan with Mako and Striker, and wonders how long he can keep news of this incident from him. If he can spare his perfectionistic and tightly-wound son one more thing to worry over, one more reason to push himself (and, by extension, Mako) farther than even Striker is meant to go, one more reason to sneer at the press and flash his Kaiju-count ribcage tattoo like he's giving them the finger (which really, he is). Then he thinks about Stacker waiting in the hall outside the medical wing, voice soft but posture rigid, pacing as he talks on the phone, thumb twisting the gold band on his left ring finger in the closest thing to a nervous tic that a man like Stacker Pentecost will ever admit to having and Herc thinks _Of course he already called her._   _Chuck already knows_.

 

Trauma is only as real as it is reflected back at you by the people you love, or so Hercules Hansen has always believed. The stitches in his forehead and the bruises around his throat, the circuit burns on his wrists and hips, they're all mirrored in the circles under Stacker's eyes and the curt nod he gives to Melissa and the _look_ he gives Herc when he finally helps him off the gurney (a look like Stacker was losing his mind, just a little, by not being able to touch Herc and make sure he was real, was still here). Stacker Pentecost is what makes Hercules Hansen real, but Hercules Hansen is what makes Stacker Pentecost invincible, and it is a delicate balance, but not a fragile one.

 

 

In the StackerMakoHercChuck clan, love can sometimes look a lot like anger. In the florescent lights of the medical bay Stacker Pentecost looks absolutely livid.  _  
_

* * *

It's four a.m. and Scott is standing in an airport sweets' shop, staring at his own face on the front of a new's rack. He hasn't done any mandatory press conferences lately, hasn't really left the Dome since Bane's team was put on double-time prepping for their overseas voyage. But it's not a recent drop or publicity still that graces the cover of _The West Coast Watch_ , an infamously anti-PPDC magazine, and he's not seventeen in the photo, he's nine. He's nine and holding hands with Stiles while the two of them skip down one of the halls of Hong Kong's Shatterdome. Stiles' eyes are closed he's smiling so hard and Scott looks like the photo was taken mid-laugh, his free arm thrown out dramatically wide to balance their gait, well-loved Karloff's tail clenched in his small fist. "How Young is Too Young?" is titled above the photograph with Dewer's Bane's symbol and stats below it. It's clearly a slant piece; there's even a quote from a well-known child therapist cautioning about the ill side-affects of children being raised in a "military environment".

 

Scott shakes his head at the ridiculousness of it all. Of doctors and writers and therapistswho live far inland having the gall to  _judge_ them. Of people, people who are so poorly informed they actually think a  _wall_ could keep themselves safe from the Kaiju, pretending to  _care_ about the Rangers. Anyone who actually cares about the Rangers, anyone who has any idea about the realities of day-to-day living in the Shatterdome, would never dare to question the decision that Scott's mom and dad (but mostly his mom) made when she decided that Scott and Stiles would be better off, safer, being raised on a military base. And then, when Scott and Stiles passed the first tests with flying colours and it became clear to everyone that they were Drift-compatible, Scott knows his mom did the right thing by letting him and Stiles go to the Academy. Allowing your children to save the world is one of the hardest decisions a parent can ever make, and Scott does not envy his parent's dilemma. Knowing that you could easily lose both of your sons in one attack, knowing that your options are between depriving the world of a truly vital commodity, and depriving your children of what is supposed to be their last carefree years. It's easier for Scott; his life is blissfully free of choice. The world _needs_ him, and Stiles and their particular talent, and it is that simple. All of his own suffering (the sore muscles, the jet-lag, the broken blood-vessels from a particularly rough drop) comes second to the prime directive:  _Fight the Kaiju, Protect the Coast, At Any Cost_. Scott thinks of himself as lucky, in an odd way, because he only has to get into a Jaeger, and that's truly the easy part. He knows that if he had to watch his own child step into a Jaeger, or watch Stiles step into one with anyone else, he wouldn't have the strength to stay behind.

 

"Oh God, oh man, you're not spacing on me again, are you?" Stiles asks, shaking Scott from his musings, and sometimes it's frightening how much Stiles sounds like their mom, like he's parroting her mix of motherly and medical concern from half a planet away. But no, Stiles is just a worrier by nature, his life being an instance in which nature _and_ nurture are working in cahoots to make Stiles Mcall-Stilinski into a phenomenal fretter. Scott often jokes that Stiles is going to grow up to be one of those dads that makes his kid put zinc on their nose and wear a hat in the pool. Sometimes Scott and Stiles like to joke around like they're going to have a future. _  
_

"Stiles," Scott says seriously, "it's been ten months without incident." Ten months since the last time his mind tried to ghost-Drift without a tangible connection. Ten months since him and Stiles got Dewer's Bane. Ten months since he last felt himself _fade_. Two Kaiju kills, three strictly assists, and now a routine base of operations rotation to test their team's abilities in a foreign port. It's been a good ten months all things considered. Mom and Dad are immensely proud, Jackson and Danny are mostly just jealous. They make a great partnership and they fight in tandem with Ku brilliantly, but it's always a bit of a one-up-ship, Jackson and Stiles' aggressive natures coming through the Drift.

 

Getting assigned Tokyo in a port rotation is a major stroke of luck (and, perhaps, a touch of nepotism), as Chuck Hansen and Mako Mori are the 'Domes' darlings and Scott doesn't think it a coincidence. Lydia Martin, a red-headed girl they knew from back in Hong Kong, is also posted there as permanently as any post can be. She works in the science department doing something Stiles can't even pronounce. It's impressive and it involves artificial circulatory systems, that's all Scott knows. Scott also knows that Stiles is a little in love with her. In the least-creepy-form-of-stalker-with-a-crush way. Like, if there was an official PPDC poster of Lydia Martin there would probably be one hanging on their wall next to the Becket brothers.

 

"I just don't want you _fading_ on me, man, you worry me when you do that." Stiles says, putting quotation marks around "fading" and giving Scott a  _look_ that he definitely learned from Dad. Scott gives him a deadpan stare in return, to which Stiles mouths  _Nagging means you care_ , and Scott finally cracks a smile. 

 

"Stiles," Scott says, waving the magazine at his brother. Stiles stops, frowns, and looks the cover over carefully. Scott can almost hear the thoughts running through Stiles' head. Thoughts like   _Irememberthat_ and   _Publicationofpersonalphotographswithoutpermissionisacrime_ and   _Theyusedpathosinacovertitlethat'sunprofessionaljournalism_.

 

What he says is, "We sure were cute kids, weren't we?" and smiles his oh-so-charming smile that he uses on Mom when she asks things like _Where have you been?_ and _What are you up to?_ and his only answer is a non-committal " _Well..._ "

 

Scott laughs. "So cute they gave us a killing machine and made us the face of a depraved movement, '... _child soldiers of a post-K dystopia'_ ," Scott says with a roll of his eyes, quoting from the last article that tried to paint them all, but especially Stacker Pentecost, as a bunch of opportunistic super-villains. Like the PPDC was some kind of secret organization bent on turning talented children into weapons. The Ranger Program, in actuality, was much less sinister than the media liked to make it out to be. Just because _technically_ child soldiers happened sometimes didn't mean it was the PPDC's inherent intent, and intentions mattered a lot to Scott.

 

"Fools, the lot of them," Stiles says, and he shakes his head with a disapproving look. He puts the magazine back on the rack, but turns it around so instead of Stiles and Scott's smiling faces all those that pass by will see is an ad for golfing.

 

"One day when this is all over, long after we've won, there will be books written and history shows about how some people talked shit about the Ranger Program, calling it 'unethical' and all kinds of noise." Stiles looks annoyed, like he's irritated that people keep on with their stupid "professional opinions" and their "concern" for kids like himself. Like they don't understand that without kids like himself and his brother, fighting on the front-lines, there wouldn't be  _time_ for fucking discussion shows on the potential harmful long-term affects of piloting a Jaeger. It's all hypothetical, and it's all pointless. Because the number one long-term affect of  _not_ piloting a Jaeger is death, for  _everyone_. And it doesn't make any sense, not to someone like Stiles who deals in pragmatics, to waste time and breath defaming something that is necessary to the world's survival. 

 

Scott finishes Stiles' thought out loud, "And the critiques will says, did these 'experts' want to live? Or did they just want to play devil's advocate to the very thing that made their articles and books and grandstanding possible? Did it make them feel enlightened, criticizing the very thing that saved humanity?"

 

Stiles nods and Scott sighs, half exasperation and half jet-lag. Scott knows he got his brother's thoughts correct, word for word, because the Drift is still strong 49 hours and three continents after "disengagement". Scott agrees with Stiles' sentiment, even though the bad press doesn't fill him with the same sense of indignation The public's disdain for all things PPDC only truly upsets him when it upsets his parents. The Drift fills him with Stiles' feelings anyway, and he can feel those as well as he can feel his own. Scott shares his brother's frustrations as easily as he shares his heart.

 

Scott thinks, maybe they don't have a future, maybe they don't get decades to read books and sit by fires and watch little ones with their eyes and their love's smile grow up and make them proud. Maybe they're the lost youth of a post-K day world; maybe they're a generation of sacrificial lambs and maybe that's okay. Scott didn't enter the Academy to be selfish and Stiles didn't enter it to be a altruistic. Bravery, afterall, takes on many forms at the end of the world. Sometimes it's easier to be _strong_  than it is to be _kind_ , and sometimes it's more important. Scott isn't betting on seeing thirty, but him and Stiles have  _now_ and they're happy and that counts for something (they have their Mom and their Dad, happy and safe, and maybe that counts for everything).

 

Other people's opinions mean so little when you're seventeen. They mean even less when there's a war on and the sum of your existence is to be a critical pawn in Marshall Pentecost's game to save humanity. Scott playfully shoves Stiles in the shoulder and the two leave to get on the plane, the polemic article soon forgotten.

 

* * *

 

"LYDIA MARTIN, LOVE of my LIFE." Stiles bellows as he marches into her lab, inside voice nowhere in sight. It's been two days since they touched down and Scott and Stiles have finally gotten a moment free from their required duties to seek out their favorite scientist. It's been two days of little sleep, test-drives, caffeine, and grumbly council members on flat-screens. Scott only still standing due to a combination of adrenaline and delayed exhaustion. He thinks that when it finally hits him he'll sleep for three days. Stiles is running mostly on sugar, particularly sugar of a fizzy and Tokyo-produced nature. Scott thinks when all  _that_ catches up with him his brother might just explode.

 

Lydia simply raises an eyebrow at Stiles' antics. She doesn't respond to anything less than 'Doctor', not from them anyway, and they know that. She hasn't since she was fifteen years old. It's been seventeen months since the brothers have seen their favorite red-headed genius and she never misses a beat.

 

"It's Hale now, actually." Lydia says without looking up, eyes still intent on the gel pad she's injecting with DNA.

 

"Hale?" Scott asks curiously at the same time Stiles says "What!" and Lydia laughs before rotating to the next station and placing her pipette down. She pulls off her blue safety gloves and Scott sees the shiny band on her left hand.  _Huh_ , he thinks,  _Hale. Well, that's new._

_  
_The Hales are one of those teams lots of people talk about, but no one really knows. Most Ranger teams haven't even _met_ them due to their lack of participation in routine 'Dome rotations (and forget about them showing up to LASD's bi-yearly Ranger workshops), not to mention their anti-social nature. The team is a trio Drift made up of Derek Hale and his sisters, Laura and Cora. Their Jaeger, Strigoi Lykos, is a rebuilt Mach III (making it more of a 3.5 in actuality, and more of a hybrid, like Gipsy) that has three sharp, curved arms, giving it the appearance of a beast with talons (or of a hand with claws). They're based out of South America and they're just... _unique_ in all senses of the word. They're odd and more than slightly creepy and Scott hadn't heard of them having any interaction with the Tokyo Shatterdome.

 

And apparently there's been  _some_ interaction, given by the way Lydia's flowered dress clings snugly to the curve of her abdomen, where it extends out slightly beneath her fitted leather belt, the bump just showing between folds of lab-coat.  _Wow_ , Scott thinks,  _a baby in the_ _apocalypse_. But he really shouldn't be surprised. If anyone was determined enough to have it all (and driven enough to make it a reality) it would be Lydia ~~Martin~~  Hale. She didn't let the Kaiju stand in the way of her college education and now she's apparently not letting them get in the way of her happy ending either.

 

" _Hale_ , hmm?" He says, giving her a _do tell_ look and eyeing her stomach curiously, "The last I'd heard, those three were strangling sea monsters outside of Lima and refusing to talk to the press, let alone the rest of the Pacific Counsel. What changed?"

 

Stiles, having seemingly recovered from his shock, says "A  _Hale_?! As in 'Derek Hale' voted Ranger most likely to be a serial killer in his free time? That Hale?"

 

Lydia waves her de-gloved hands at Scott and Stiles disabusingly, "Don't be silly," she says, "I didn't marry one of those dead-eyed Drifters from South America. The Strigoi give me the creeps as much as the next person, and they're bad enough as in-laws."

 

Scott feels Stiles' panic quell upon hearing that Lydia has not, in fact, married an unsub, and rocks back on his feet contemplatively.  _There's another one?_ he wonders. He thought the rest of the Hales had died tragically, hence the trio's lack of friendliness and their propensity to kill viciously. He didn't know their was a fourth survivor, let alone a fourth who was still in the Program.

 

"Congratulations!" Scott says, and he means it. Lydia is young, just about their age, but she's a good friend and undeniably a genius. If getting married and having a baby is what she has decided to do her life then, well, it's probably the right thing to do. Scott's only been in love once, and it was a questionable (but certainly not regrettable) affair, and he's still working out the difference between "loving" someone and being "in love". Lydia has always been light-years ahead of him and Stiles in maturity anyway, and he doesn't have to understand Lydia's decisions to respect them.

 

"Who's the lucky guy?" Stiles asks, trying for casual and settling for not-totally-jealous. He shoves his hands into his pockets to stop their fidgeting, attempting to act less uncool than he usually does in Lydia's presence. Afterall, she's a married women now, so there's no reason to act like a schoolboy with a crush. There's no reason to  _be_ a schoolboy with a crush.

 

"His name's Peter." Lydia says, and then she smiles a brilliant smile that's all red lipstick and white teeth, like just the thought of him lights her up like Arc-9 reactor core on overdrive. Scott can't help but smile in the face of her positive  _giddiness_ and it's just nice, every once in a while, to see someone excited over something that's more than _surviving_.

 

"He's actually working on Dewer's Bane right now, rewiring the left arm and making some improvements that I think you'll enjoy." Lydia says, "Say 'hi' to my hubby during equipment checks, will you?"

 

Scott nods as Stiles asks, "How will we know which 'tech he is, does he have "Mr. Lydia Hale" written across the back of his jumpsuit?"

 

Scott and Lydia both laugh. It certainly  _isn't_ outside the realm of possibilities, given Lydia's known force of personality.

 

Instead she just smiles, shakes her head, and says, "Oh, you'll know him when you see him. Peter's the sexy one with the southern drawl and scars all over his face."

 

 


	8. Under the Influence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott and Stiles meet Peter. Chuck continues to have an inferiority complex that runs deeper than the Mariana Trench. Boyd holds down the fort and another Hansen enters the game.

Peter is down at the loading docks, dark grease stains highlighting his cheekbones and scars edging under the collar of his mechanic jumpsuit, licking up his neck like the flames that put them there. He looks like something from a movie, if that movie happened to feature an extremely handsome man who'd had a run-in with a werewolf (and do the scars make him even  _handsomer?_...and is  _handsomer_ even a word?). Scott turns to Stiles and raises his eyebrow meaningfully.

 

"Right back at you, bro," Stiles says as he slaps Scott's shoulder.

 

"Ah, Team Bane," Peter greets them at the foot of Dewer's Bane's scaffolding. Up close his grin is noticeably broken, his lips reflecting two different skin-tones and an unnatural shine that belies past skin-grafts, but when he extends his hand in welcome his grip is warm and his handshake firm, a show of confidence over aggression.

 

"I don't envy you," Peter says after introductions have been made, and his wry smile pulls tightly on his scars, throwing them into sharp relief when they pass one of the workspace floodlights. It's not unbecoming, not at all.

 

"How could you? You're married to Dr. Martin!" Stiles blurts out and Peter laughs.

 

"True, true," he says, "but I meant about piloting," he gestures to Bane,  "It takes something out of you to get in a Jaeger, I know that more than most."

 

"You used to pilot," Scott says, more a statement than a question, suddenly remembering why Peter's face looks so familiar, "I remember you! You lectured on tri-way connections," and then, more sedately, "I didn't know you were a Hale."

 

"Mister Aiolfi!" Stiles blurts out as the name comes back to him, as soon as Scott makes the mental connection, and Peter smiles, "I haven't been called that for quite some time." 

 

"We're kind of huge nerds," Scott says apologetically, gesturing between Stiles and himself, and Stiles shrugs flippantly like _What can you do?_   and says, "We used to sit in B-Tech lectures for fun."

 

Peter laughs again, "You two have impressive memories, not a lot of people make the connection between Peter Aiolfi, bioscience enthusiast and rising Ranger, and Peter Hale, M-Tech Specialist and former Pilot."

 

Stiles rocks back and forth on the heels of his feet, a combination of contemplation and nervous energy, and asks, "Is that why you changed your name? To separate the two, on purpose?"

 

"Not exactly." Peter says, and Scott sees a flash of white-gold when he puts his hands in his pockets, "My teammates aren't the biggest fans of the PPDC, as you might have noticed, so when I volunteered I used my birth surname so as to not attract undue attention."

 

Stiles nods with interest, undoubtedly filing the information away for later, before saying, "Wait a minute, if you're adopted then was it simply chance that you were be drift-compatible with the Strigoi? Or was this some kind of strategic adoption, like figure skaters and their coaches? I mean, I know the PPDC looks at relatives for a reason."

 

Scott tenses as Stiles' questioning borders on invasive, his curiosity a thing often piqued and not easily assuaged, but Peter doesn't seem to mind, "I was born Peter Aiolfi." he explains, "When my parents died my sister and her husband adopted me; I was eight when I became a Hale."

 

"Oh," says Stiles in understanding, and Scott gestures between his brother and himself, "We just hyphenated our names when our parents got married. For ultimate fairness and complication."

 

Peter laughs again, and Scott thinks that he's far more affable than most of the M-Techs back at LASD, "Well, that's one way of doing it. You see, my sister is very proud, _was_ very proud, and she took our heritage and lineage very seriously. Hence wanting me to take her husband's name."

 

"It's funny, really," Peter continues with a sigh, "because she cared so much and then, in just a couple of years, none of that mattered at all."

 

"No, no," Stiles says in a rare moment of empathy for someone who's not family, "Nothing is meaningless, you took the Hale name into the Apocalypse, that's got to count for something, doesn't it?"

 

"Yeah," Peter says with a wry smile, "I guess in a way Talia would be proud, end of the world and her kids are at the center of it."

 

Scott bumps shoulders affectionately with Stiles to tell him _good job_ ; he is always sure to show approval when Stiles is considerate of other people's feelings. Stiles bumps back and gives him a look that says  _I can do feelings, bro_.

 

And when Peter says, "Alright then, let me show you all the ways I'm gonna improve your girl," Stiles gets a look on his face that's halfway between turned on and deeply insulted and Scott cracks up.

 

"You gonna teach us some new tricks?" Stiles asks, with a suggestive wink and a cocky smile.

 

"I'll show you how to avoid being lit on fire," Peter deadpans, and then gestures to his face, "You couldn't hope to pull this off."

 

And Scott already knows they're going to like this guy.

 

* * *

 

The next day Scott and Stiles are exploring the aircraft hanger when "Oye! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!" is hollered at their backs, followed by a higher, clearer, "Yo motherfuckers!" and the brothers freeze before turning, comically in sync.

 

Drop-team Striker are standing a couple of yards back (to their vast un-surprise) in color-coordinated leather jackets and matching boots. They make for a fierce pair, with Chuck's intimidating frame and Mako's iconic hair, but Mako ruins their aloof coolness by beaming at them.

 

"Mako!" Stiles calls, skipping forward. He meets her halfway and sweeps her up into a hug. Mako giggles as Stiles spins her around and Scott finds himself grinning broadly. It's so good to see his oldest friends (and isn't that a weary phrase for one to use, unironically, at seventeen?) that he suddenly feels their six months' absence from his life. He never lets himself miss people when they're away, it's his own form of self-preservation, but whenever they come back into his life he realizes how much they meant to him. _Mean_ to him, he means, because Chuck and Mako are a present thing, a solid thing, and one of the few and one of the best that he has in his life, besides his parents. Mako tucks herself into Scott's shoulder when it's his turn and he just holds her for a moment and breathes in the familiar. Mako and Chuck are practically like family, their parents being friends and all, and they're a pair whose company Scott and Stiles can enjoy without having to explain themselves. The two teams, Striker and Bane, belong to a small, very specific, sub-category of "adoptive sibling Drift partners". Chuck and Mako are a packaged deal. And besides, Chuck seems to hate Stiles and Scott a lot less than he hates the rest of the world, which is always a plus. Maybe it's because they met him before he knew he was supposed to be an asshole.

 

"Dad got attacked," Mako says without preamble and Scott freezes. _How did he not know about that?_ He hasn't gotten any urgent messages from Mom since he and Stiles touched down, and he's only checked in once, mindful of the time difference. Then he thinks, if something happened and no message was sent then Mom must have handled it, so Hercules Hanson is probably fine. Sometimes no news  _is_ good news.

 

"Is he okay?" Stiles asks at the same time Scott asks, "What happened?"

 

Chuck looks sour, all tense shoulders and clenched fists. Chuck always looks sour but there are subtle differences between his "I'm going to kick everyone who gets between me and the gym" face and his huffy "I'm going to fight everyone in this bar, for honor" face, if one knows his tells. This is his patented "my dad is such a noble idiot" look. It's basically his default expression. Worrying over his old man is going to put Chuck in an early grave, if the Kaijus don't first.

 

"Fucking _BuenaKai_." Chuck grits out, like the word causes him pain. Mako nods solemnly, and adds, "Your mom stitched him up when he got back. Sensei says he's fine, just a little roughed up." From her pointed look it's obvious that  _Sensei_ isn't fine.

 

"I hate those freaks," Stiles' words in Scott's mouth and Chuck nods, looking appeased.

 

"Are they dead?" Stiles asks, and Mako shrugs like petty details of life-and-death are beneath her. And they're not, it's just that she trusts her second father, and she knows how much Herc means to him, so it matters not in what manner Stacker has decided to deal with the current threat, because she knows whatever manner he chooses will be sufficient. The Marshall is nothing if not sufficient.

 

"The _ones_ who showed their hand are, and the rest will be, it's just a matter of time," Chuck answers, and there's an icy truth beneath his words. There's a topic that no one--with the exception of ranty, day-time talk shows and late-night message boards--talks about: who the Buenakai are, who they _really_ are. Despite their constant presence in the media, and their being a constant pain in the PPDC's collective ass, civilians pay little attention to who the Cultists are as individuals. And, for the most part, it's just as well. These people did, after-all, join a cult for the express purpose of no longer  _being_  individuals, they gave up their rights and rationality to have a place to belong, a higher purpose. But that doesn't dull the facts, the fact that the average age of a new member of the Church of Reckoner is 19 to 25, and that the average lifespan of a Buenakai is 21 years, 6 months. No one talks about how, as dangerous as the Cultists are to Rangers and the odd--kidnapped--virgin, they're more a danger to themselves than anything. Between self-flagellation, substance abuse, and martyrdom, worshippers of Reckoner meet their ends sooner than not. Most newcomers to the church of Reckoner barely last 18 months, tops.

 

Scott shivers, the Reckoner temple gives him the creeps as much as the next person, but he understands the full weight of Chuck's words. A look of satisfaction flashes across Mako's face, colored with bloodlust. It was clear that she'd be an offensive-Ranger since the first day Stacker let her on the training floor of the Kwoon. People often forget that Chuck isn't the only member of Striker Eureka who's always angry.

 

"I don't want to cash in on my nepotistic trust fund as unsubtly as possible, but is it possible that you guys have heard something about the transfer?" Stiles asks, redirecting the conversation to something less dire.

 

"Oh anata," Mako says fondly, throwing her arms around Stiles' neck, "You're not nearly as subtle as you think you are, that's one of the things that I love about you," and she goes up on her toes as if to kiss Stiles on the cheek, turning at the last second and whispering, "You got Sydney," in his ear.

 

Stiles draws away, eyes wide, and says, "You're serious?" When she nods her assent Stiles turns and flails at Scott, "Oh MY GOd..We GOT SYDNEY! Ahhh!"

 

Chuck rolls his eyes and stalks off while Scott and Stiles twirl around in celebration, and Mako laughs in a manner so undignified she'll later deny it ever happened.

 

"What's got his knickers in a twist?" Stiles asks, looking up curiously at Mako from his place on the floor, where he's collapsed on top of Scott.

 

"It's complicated," Mako says, watching Chuck walk away.

 

Stiles slaps his hands against the concrete floor, a mix of excitement and exasperation, and says, "When is it every fucking not?"

 

"So Australia is a good thing, I take it?" Mako asks sardonically.

 

"Oh hell yeah," Scott says with a smile, pausing in his attempts to peel his very dramatic brother off the floor, "You were there briefly right? When you were younger?"

 

"How do you think Dad met Sensei?" Mako asks with a fond smile, "I like Sydney. It's not my home, but it's Chuck and Dad's home, so I respect it."

 

Scott nods, agreeing with sentimentality. For all her fierce emotions, Mako can be deceptively gentle. She's one of the few Rangers that Scott can count on to never be numb. She might appear cool and collected for the press, but on a personal level Mako is genuine, full of heart (even if that heart is often on fire). Scott finds it refreshing.

 

"We've just been for the seminars and workshops, stuff like that," Scott explains, "Stiles took a liking to it," he says and gestures to his mess of a brother, who's still rolling around on the floor like an overexcited puppy.

 

"Yeah, met the family," Stiles says, sitting up finally. "That adorable baby girl Herc fawns over like she's the sun. Met Chuck's bro too, he's not hard on the eyes either," he says with a wink, and Mako turns towards him sharply. 

 

"He's not Charles' brother," Mako says with the tone of someone who's repeated the phrase many times (she has, there are constant rumors surrounding the paternity of a certain Hansen, people love to speculate and assume, often incorrectly).

 

"Look, me and Scott are brothers, and Scott didn't even speak English in the womb, okay? Chuck and Hieri are only a couple of years apart and they share, like, 15% of their genetics? They're brothers in my book, Chuck is just being difficult."

 

" _Chuck is just being difficult_ would be the title of the sad motif on the soundtrack of his life," Mako answers.

 

" _Harsh_ , but accurate," Scott says approvingly, and is rewarded with one of Mako's giggles that, for the record, are so adorable they should be illegal.

 

"So, last I heard, Hieri passed the last round of training with flying colors. Word is he's in trials for a partner right now, but with Daddy Herc's talent that shouldn't be difficult at all. No, what I'm curious about is the rumor that they're commissioning a Mach VI for him and said future partner," Stiles finishes with a conspiratorial hum and arches an eyebrow imploringly.

 

"Chuck's only living biological parent is attacked by Kaiju extremists, and you assume that his "mood" is due to his brother scoring well on his sims?" Mako asks, doing her best to sound unimpressed with Stiles' theory. The truth is Stiles is on-point and everybody knows it. Chuck has a _thing_ about his little cousin (who's _not_ his brother, he pedantically insists). An inferiority complex thing. A thing where he gets surly and quiet whenever he hears whispers about how Hieri might be the first Ranger since Hercules Hansen to have full compatibility.

 

"Ah, so it is "brother" now, is it?" Stiles teases and Scott rolls his eyes, "Come now, you know that if "having an inferiority complex" was an Olympic sport, Chuck would take home more medals than Michael Phelps."

 

Mako cracks a grin, "Cousin," she says, and Stiles leans in, stage-whispering " _Brother_ "dramatically.

 

"Herc is  _not_ Hieri's father," Mako says patiently, "He's _just_ his legal guardian."

 

"I know," Stiles says with a grin, "I'm just being purposefully obtuse," and has to hop away to avoid getting kicked in the shin.

 

"Don't make me sic my boyfriend on you," Mako warns.

 

Stile pretends to think about it for a moment, and then his eyes widen in ernest, " _Please_ _do_."

 

Several A-techs look up at the sound of Mako smacking Stiles upside the head.

 

* * *

 

6: 30 a.m. ~ Sydney Shatterdome

 

"Who're we getting?" Hieronymus Hanson asks, leaning over the back of Vernon Boyd's command chair and trying to peer at the color-coded transfer schedule in front of him. Boyd, Hieronymus' good friend and relative-by-marriage, is Jr. Chief at LOCCENT, meaning he mans the main control desk during "bitch shift" (8 p.m-8 a.m.) and acts as right-hand man to the Chief during drops. His work space, meticulously organized but _not_ spotless, is covered in an array of monitors and wires, computers monitoring the Shatterdome's vital signs. Boyd likes having access to all of Sydney's Jaegers, pilots, and communications at his fingertips. It makes him feel powerful, it makes him feel in control. With less than two hours left to his shift, his second thermos of dark roast is getting light and he can feel his muscles starting to tense up, his bed calling to him.

 

"We're getting the Alere-Bane tag-team after the latter is done with their test-run in Tokyo," Boyd says, and knowing what Hieri is really asking about, and that it goes beyond innocent curiosity, adds, "It looks like Dewer's Bane got swapped in for Striker Eureka at the last minute."

 

"Damnit!" Hieri mutters in frustration, and no small amount of hurt, and throws himself into the chair next to Boyd with a sigh. It's fucking typical, he shouldn't be surprised, but the fact that Chuck weaseled his way out of an assignment down under, and that Herc probably helped him do so, hurts. He knows his cousin hates him, and he knows Chuck has reasons enough to be complicated, but refusing to accept a mandatory assignment so he doesn't have to acknowledge his cousins' existence? That's low.

 

"I'm sorry kiddo," Boyd says, patting his friend's leg sympathetically. Technically Hieronymus is only a couple of months younger than Erica, but Boyd has never treated him as a peer. Hieri came into his and Erica's life a little over three years ago, during a particularly difficult point in their lives, and the pair quickly adopted him as a little brother. At a well-built 6' 3", Boyd is often mistaken for being older than he is, and Hieri, on the petite side of 5'8", is often mistaken for being much younger. Boyd lets the assumption lie uncorrected when he can; Hieri's had a rough childhood, even by cynical post-K-day standards, that's left him a bit behind, emotionally and mentally.

 

"You don't think it was some kind of clerical issue?" Boyd says, entering data one-handedly, and pulling Hieri's feet into his lap with the other.

 

"You know my cousin," Hieri says, doesn't say _If Chuck truly wanted to come home he'd never let a clerical error stand in his way_ , and wiggles his toes, "He's a force of nature. A  _rude_ force of nature."  _And yet you want to be friends with him_ , his subconscious supplies, traitorously.

 

"No I don't, actually," Boyd says and glances over at Hieri, "He prefers to communicate via Tendo on joint-drops, and I wasn't high up enough in my division, when he and Herc used to live here, to interact much with them."

 

"Don't be pedantic," Hieri says, and leans his head against the back of his chair dramatically. He runs his fingers through his curls, pressing fingertips into his scalp in an attempt to stave off a migraine. The previous evening he was undergoing trials for a co-pilot; 6 hours in the Kwoon, 15 candidates, and each match ended in a draw. The idea of going back to test another fifteen in just a few hours makes him apprehensive, and his head throbs again, "You know _of_ my cousin," he says pointedly.

 

"Aye," Boyd makes a noise of agreement, "I know enough," and he doesn't add that Chuck isn't worth the turmoil he causes Hieri every time he rejects him. Boyd is wise enough to know that that kind of advice is usually the least helpful.

 

"So how are the trials going?" He asks, changing tracks.

 

"Um, good I guess," Hieri says with a shrug, "I'm covered in bruises and exhausted, but every match ended in a draw--"

 

"That's great!" Boyd interjects and Hieri smiles brightly at the praise.

 

"But I'm no closer to getting a partner, so that's a bit discouraging," he finishes.

 

"What's the hold-up? I thought you were like a prodigy at that stuff," Boyd says, and Hieri knows he's halfway teasing.

 

"I'm not a prodigy," he corrects, "I'm a savant, and besides you can be good at fighting and get nowhere, you're not supposed to fight, you're supposed to dance."

 

"What's the difference?" Boyd asks, and he's genuinely curious, not just trying to distract Hieri from his family issues, "Between prodigy and savant? And how is fighting well ever not a good thing?"

 

"Um, a prodigy is a young child that's really good at something difficult, like a ten year old that can cook like a professional chef," Hieri explains, "A savant is anyone who's unnaturally talented at something complicated."

 

"So you're a bit of both?" Boyd asks.

 

"Well, I'm over the age of fourteen, so being intrinsically good at Drifting just makes me a savant," Hieri says with a shrug.

 

"Ah, so Chuck is a prodigy, right?" Boyd asks with a grin, "'Cause he killed Kaiju when he was still a teenager?"

 

"Ugg, don't remind me," Hieri says with a faux-huff and swats at Boyd's shoulder. He puts up with people comparing him to his more infamous family members on a daily basis, so Boyd's good-natured teasing doesn't bother him. Hieri is still a teenager, he's--objectively speaking--still incredibly young to have graduated the Academy and already be in talks for a Jaegar, but not in the Hansen family. In the Hansen family he's positively developmentally delayed. And, well, technically he _is_ , developmentally delayed that is, but in the post-K-day world, in the PPDC world, autism is no excuse for not getting in a Jaeger. Eighteen and still testing for a Drift partner? Pssh, when Chuck was eighteen he was on his third tattoo. And to be fair, Hieri's cousin had his sights on Mako Mori since he was eleven years old, and not everyone can be lucky enough to be Drift-compatible with their dad's new spouse's kid but still, Hieri is not where he would currently like to be in his Ranger career.

 

"And to answer your previous query: fighting well can only get you three-quarters of the way. I need someone who can give as good as I can take."

 

"And none of the candidates were good?" Boyd asks.

 

"More like everybody was good," Hieri says with a sigh, "And that's the problem, right? We're not looking for good, we're looking for mind-meldy levels of Vulcan synchronicity, and I've just got "good"."

 

"It sounds a lot like sex," Boyd says agreeably.

 

"How?" Hieri says, but his voice clearly say 'ew' by his tone.

 

"A good lover is always good, no matter who they're with. But when you put a good lover with another good lover..." Boyd says, miming fireworks going off.

 

Hieri laughs, "Are you saying I'm a good lover?" He asks with a cheeky grin.

 

"Metaphorically speaking," Boyd says with a wink.

 

Hieri checks his corded sports watch, "Oh, hey, Boyd, it's almost seven. Do you want me to go sign Timí out of the crèche, since she should be up by now? I can bring her back here for the last hour of your shift."

 

"That would be tops actually, thanks Hieri," Boyd says with a smile as the other boy starts to leave, "Oh, and if the ankle-biter requests pineapple, tell her no, she's consumed an alarming amount this week alone so we're trying to let South America recover a bit."

 

Hieri laughs, "I don't know if I can say no to the puppy eyes, I'm not immune," and then holds up his hands, "Also I'm the best big brother ever, so if the tyke gets her hands on some tropical fruit, I know nothing of it,"

 

"Just bring her back here," Boyd orders, "And then you can head to the gym to prepare for your impeding ass-kicking," he says with an amused smirk. 

 

"Ah fuck you, my bruises are gonna have bruises," Hieri says with a groan.

 

"Language!" Boyd admonishes playfully as Hieri tugs on his shoes on his way to the lifts.

 

"And no sweets!" Boyd calls after the blond-headed boy. He just hears an answer of laughter as the lift doors close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and thank you for all the kudos and comments! They make my day :D
> 
> Hope you enjoy <3
> 
> Also, to those who were wondering, the Beckets will be joining the story soon, as well as Deucalion :]
> 
>  
> 
> p.s. Please check out the second story in the series, it's a prequel/companion piece to Dewer's Bane, so reading both will make both stories make much more sense :)


	9. start the clock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I made a soundtrack for this fic! It's on 8tracks and it's a playlist for Stiles and Scott called "Don't Dew Me Like That", hope you enjoy! [8tracks.com/ninthnerve_13/don-t-dew-me-like-that] Check it out and tell me what you think! :]

Scott & Stiles [Tokyo Shatterdome]

 

"I think I just slept for thirty hours straight," Stiles says, clutching his head and ignoring Scott's incredibly lame "You slept for thirty hours  _straight?_ " pun in the background. His mouth is dry and there're stars behind his eyelids. He feels like he landed on the wrong side of the equator, like he can feel every strand of gravity trying desperately to hold him to the earth. He feels hungover. "I'm not sure what my name is," Stiles says with a hoarse laugh, "I don't think I've slept this much in the past five years."

 

"Like, collectively?" Scott asks, "Or, like, consecutively?" and smirks at Stiles' weak but sarcastic "hardy harh harh" from under the covers.

 

"I only slept for twenty-four," Scott says, sitting on the edge of Stiles' bunk and patting the lump under the duvet that is his brother sympathetically, "I woke up for food and then took another nap."

 

Stiles makes a sound that probably means _good idea_ but just sounds dry.

 

"Here," Scott says, nudging a nutribar and a bottle of water under the covers.

 

"Have I ever told you that you're my hero?" Stiles says when he emerges from his cocoon, water bottle already half empty.

 

"I told you not to eat all those Zotzs," Scott says, chuffing Stiles across the back of the head when his brother snuggles into his shoulder with a groan.

 

"You know I'm not capable of regret when it comes to sugary substances," Stiles mumbles into Scott's shoulder.

 

"Or self-control, apparently," Scott snarks back and Stiles laughs, laying back and stretching his lanky body out as far as he can reach on his narrow military bed, "Ahh, my back," Stiles moans in a way that's very unbecoming of a seventeen-year-old (though Danny would be quick to remind them that--due to the environmental pressures of piloting Jaeger tech in various levels of the atmosphere, they have osteological age of someone much older--the fucking nerd) and arches off the mattress, popping segments of his spine and sighing in satisfaction.

 

"Yikes," Scott says with a laugh, "You sound like something Dr.Frankenstein brought back to life," and tosses Stiles his basketball shorts from one of their still-unpacked duffel bags. They always pack light, travel light, and there's no reason settling in only to pack up again in three weeks when their transfer to Sydney goes through. Scott tosses his brother his sneakers next, getting up to unlatch the door to their barrack while Stiles finishes off his water bottle. He's already dressed for the gym, has been for ten minutes before Stiles finally woke up. Sometimes it's difficult being the left-hemisphere. It means always being one step ahead, it means being the thought before the action. Other times though, it just comes naturally. Scott opens the door and Stiles steps out after him. Sometimes, most times, no words are necessary. Stiles falls into step beside him.

 

* * *

 

Scott nudges Stiles with his toes, looking concerned. Stiles huffs out a breath dramatically, splayed as he is on the floor of the gymnasium.

 

"Did you try to do the mile in under four minutes?" Scott asks, and it's more of a judgement than a question.

 

"Um...yeah?" Stiles says, looking a little guilty, and a little nauseous. He's always three shades paler than Scott, Polish heritage be damned, but right now he's pushing five or six.

 

Scott just shakes his head, "You know we're not going to be fighting the Kaijus on foot, right?" he says, looking his brother over. He knows how Stiles gets sometimes. How he pushes himself. Scott feels the pressure every time they drift, being a left-sider is no vacation, but Stiles has his perfectionistic impulses to contend with. Scott takes comfort in the fact that he will never let Stiles down, and that's what matters. Stiles' brain sometimes wreaks havoc on his conscience, telling him he's going to let _himself_ down. That's another ballpark entirely.

 

"I just want, I just want to be in _peak_ shape when we get to Australia, you know? Like, it's big leagues. I want to impress," Stiles says, when his breath returns to him. Scott hums sympathetically and drops to matted floor beside him.

 

"I mean, their drop-team is super cool and this is our first non-primary post so it's like we have to be on our best behavior 'cause we're away from home without the 'rents and it's a lot of pressure, you know? Doing drops without Tendo or Stacker or anyone familiar?" Stiles lets out with a long breath, raising his eyebrows as if to ask _you know?_ again in a bid for reassurance, eyes worried.

 

Scott does know. He knows the worry, knows the million and one things that race through his mind before he goes to sleep each night. He knows Stiles better than anyone ever could. Sometimes he can feel Stiles' neuroses inside his head like they're his own.

 

"What are you doing?" Scott says, reaching his hand out 'til the tips of his fingers brush his brother's arms. It's a formality, asking. He and Stiles have been beyond words for some time. Still, when Stiles is upset sometimes he likes to talk. Sometimes, both of them, like to pretend that they're normal, at least a little bit.

 

"Coming to terms with my mortality," Stiles says with his eyes closed and his arms down flat at his sides. He looks absolutely still, pale except for the blush across the apple's of his cheeks, still flushed from his three minutes forty-seven second attempt at a mile.

 

"Well that's morbid," Scott says, and Stiles just hums in agreeance.

 

"I wonder what the Sydney team is doing right now?" Scott asks after a couple moments of silent contemplation.

 

"J-tech?" Stiles asks, opening his eyes, "Probably dreading our arrival," he says, and grins like a shark.

 

Scott grins back.

 

* * *

 

Erica & Hieri [Sydney Shatterdome] 

 

Hieri screams--one long note of frustration and anguish--and pounds his fists on the gym's matted floor. His nails are starting to cut into his palms but he pays them no mind. Sometimes he feels like his mind is going to turn in on itself. Right now he feels like breaking everything. He's been in trials for a Drift partner for three days and he's so _empty_ , he has nothing left to give. He knows  _he knows_ what he's made of. He's made of a degenerate PPDC hotshot and low-class secondary school nymphet. He knows what everyone (everyone that isn't Erica or Boyd or Timí or Uncle Herc or Uncle Stacker or-- _maybe_ \--Chuck) says. He's heard it whispered behind the hands of every person in the 'Dome that knows his family name. And amongst those who don't know his name...the whispers are something much worse.  _WHORE      SYCOPHANT       RETARD       BASTARD      SOCIOPATH_

 

Like Hieri poised on the floor three hours earlier, score 4-2, weight on his left foot, right foot resting on his sparring partner's throat, pining the older boy to the Kwoon matt. The boy is six inches taller and six stone heavier. The boy is three years older, and handsome, but that's not something Hieri really pays attention to. No, his attention is drawn to the hollow of the other boy's throat, the dip between his adam's apple and his clavicle, where Hieri gently presses the head of his staff, signaling the end of the match.

 

Like Hieri standing up and extending his hand to help his opponent up--pleased with the match but not pleased that he hasn't found his partner yet--and the older boy ( _Thom_ Hieri thinks his name is) not taking it. And he would shrug it off (like he shrugs so many things off, like so many times he turns away and pretends not to see, so many things he pretends not to feel), if not for the mid-bow whisper of  _no one wants to drift with an aspie anyway_ and the smug look of superiority Thom gives him before he walks back to join the others. Hieri doesn't even know why it still gets to him--and sometimes it doesn't--but in that moment he feels like he's been stabbed in the chest.

 

He doesn't let it show. He gets through three more matches before the Marshall ends trials for the day. He gets through dinner and a ten minute shower before he finds himself back in the gym, barreling his taped hands into the punching bag and screaming himself hoarse.

 

Hieri pretends to shrugs it all off. Every. Fucking. Day. The stares, the whispers, the disappointed look in his Uncle's eyes (on the rare occasion that his Uncle will actually _look_ at him). But the truth is Hieri has a heart and it breaks every time the world reminds him what a failure he is. Hieri is eighteen but he looks fifteen. Hieri is almost 5' 8" and barely nine stone and projected to be the most Drift-compatible person to ever step foot in a Jaeger. Hieri's parents are dead and he knows he would have been left on the streets if the PPDC didn't see him as the answer to their prayers. Hieri has such unlimited potential that there's literally no way he can live up to people's expectations. Most of the time he just holds his breath and acts like the pressure isn't slowly killing him. Most of the time he just avoids looking people in the eye and pretends they're not finding him wanting.

 

"No one will ever partner with me," Hieri snuffles pitifully to himself and sinks down onto the matt. He curls his knees under him, sinking into children's pose, and takes deep breaths, trying to sooth the burn in his throat from screaming for minutes on end. He stretches his arms over his head and winces, the backs of his hands and the sides of his wrists badly bruised from two days of sparring. Hieri hears his tears hitting the matt beneath his face, the salty liquid not getting a chance to run down his face at the angle he's positioned. He buries his face into the inside of his arm and sobs. All he wants to do is kill Kaiju, that's what he's good at, unnaturally so, but he can only be assigned a Jaeger once he acquires a partner and finding someone to work with is oh-so-hard. Everything is hard. _Life_ is hard. Maybe, if ( _when_ ) he finds a Drift partner Uncle Herc won't look at him like he causes him pain. Maybe Chuck won't look at him like he wishes he didn't exist.

 

Hieri flinches, a habit of a reaction that's hard to lose, when Erica brushes her fingers over one of his clenched fists, "Hey," she says, voice soft as if he'll spook, and he draws in a shuddery breath, trying to quiet his sobs now that he knows he's not alone. It's a bit of a losing battle, and tears are still coming fast when he raises his head to look at her. 

 

"They hate me because I'm, you know," he says, gesturing to his head and trying to articulate his constant experience of discrimination as a neurodivergent member of the Ranger Program (unfortunately his inability to _be_ articulate is one of the things he gets discriminated for). Right now it just comes across as thick sobs, the back of Hieri's hand pressed to his mouth not doing much to muffle them in their resurgence, and Erica looks at him as if her heart is breaking.

 

"I am nothing, nothing, nothing," Hieri repeats and Erica wraps her arms around his shaking shoulders, gripping him tight and pulling him back into her embrace. She makes shushing noises not unlike the ones she uses to get Timí back to sleep after a nightmare. Hieri shudders, his body still racked with sobs even though it's run out of tears, and he tries to breathe.

 

"We've come so far Hieri, so far," she says and he shakes his head. Erica is so mature and so strong and he feels like a waste in comparison to her sometimes. He knows Erica loves him, she's told him nearly everyday for the past three years. But his parents loved him too. It all leaves a bit of a bad taste in his mouth. People usually say "love" when they want something for the wrong reasons. But he and Erica, with their blonde curls and their distrust of the world and their crooked smiles, are like twins. Erica is like a better reflection of himself and that is why he trusts her.

 

"You never wanted to end it," he says, trying to make her understand that she's stronger than him, that she deserves more credit. Wants her to  _understand_ that sometimes only the possibility of failure keeps him from trying to off himself. That only the risk of getting suspended from the Jaeger Program ( _again_ ) keeps him from dismantling one of Boyd's old razors.

 

"That doesn't mean I didn't want it to end," Erica says, like a secret, tracing faded white scars on the insides of his wrists with gentle fingertips. And it is a secret, even if he saw it in her eyes the first time they met. He doesn't want to imagine what her life was like in the months before they were introduced, just knows that she too was fighting for her life in her own way. He knows what the scars on his Uncle's wrists mean, knows that just because the identical wounds on Erica's wrists have faded doesn't mean they've really gone away.

 

Hieri holds up his own bruised hands, and they're mirrors even though they're not perfect (he idly wonders if the men who broke them are having seven years of bad luck), and says, "I'm so tired," as if it explains everything.

 

"I know, baby, I know," Erica says with tears prickling the edges of her eyes, and maybe it does.

 

She gathers him in her arms again, pulling him on to her lap and he sighs, finally settling down and resting his head on her shoulder. As his heartbeat slows to match Erica's he feels like he could fall asleep right here. He thinks he could sleep for a year. Sleep through the end of the war, or maybe just the world.

 

"Do you love me?" Hieri whispers, and it's a comfort, asking questions he already knows the answers to.

 

"I love you more than I love myself," Erica says, and it's the truth. It would be the truth if Erica said it to Timí. It would be the truth if Hieri said it to _her_.

 

So he does.

 

"I know," Erica answers with a soft smile, and she doesn't take it as the insult it could be misinterpreted as. She and Hieri are the same, and what they lack in expressing their feelings properly they make up for in genuineness.

 

They're getting a new defense team in two weeks. The next projected attack is in five months and three days. When that Kaiju (projected name: Taurax) emerges from the breach Hieri and his to-be-named partner are expected to lead the offense. The logical part of his brain knows he _can_ do it. The traitorously human part of his mind just has no idea _how_.

 

"It's going to be fine, Hieri," Erica whispers soothingly, as if she can hear his brain trying to work him into another panic.

 

Hieri slowly unclenches his fists and tries to let himself believe it.

 

* * *

 

Allison Argent [L.A. Shatterdome]

 

Cement walls offset by florescent military-grade lighting are harsh on the eyes at any time, but at eight a.m. on a Monday morning they particularly grate. Allison taps her heels impatiently waiting for the lift to arrive, no doubt scuffing them on the rough-hewn floor. She doesn't have a lot of professional dealings with the L.A. base of the PPDC, and has had no cause to stop by since she and Scott broke up. Her family operates one of the only three privately funded Shatterdomes in the country; the Argent-Republic Shatterdome, port of Tijuana (or A.R.T., as the public knows them), and they've always preferred to deal with the government directly, so as to not be inhibited by the conservative concerns of the PPDC. They are a French-American alliance that launches off the southern tip of Tijuana, and employs absolute discretion. That makes her meeting this morning with the illustrious Marshall Pentecost something of an aberration.

 

At five-thirty this morning, Pacific Standard Time, one of ART's Rangers sustained serious injuries and had to be airlifted to the L.A. Shatterdome, over a hundred miles away. Rangers bodies, having been subjected to conditions no normal person would ever experience--including being exposed to more radiation and stress than the average astronaut--are a science all their own. What are considered healthy vitals on a Jaeger pilot are far from the norm for a healthy non-Ranger. For many reasons, including the fact that a Ranger's body _technically_  classifies as a weapon, and thus is not allowed in hospitals, they can't be admitted to any nearby general civilian hospital, and thus have to be airlifted to the nearest public Shatterdome. Deucalion, one of ART's best Rangers, was admitted to L.A.'s medical wing at about six thirty that morning. Allison arrived an hour later, having been briefed on Deucalion's condition on the helicopter over. She's vague on Deucalion's prognosis, only knowing that he was injured in an error of machinery, suffered blood loss due to trauma, and has since been stabilized. She's to meet with the Marshall and the Head of Medical to discuss Deucalion's projected recovery time and outlay a plan for his eventual transfer.   

 

Allison sighs and rolls her shoulders, working out the kinks and tension from the helicopter ride. She hasn't seen Scott around anywhere in the half hour since she landed (not that she was looking for him) but she's pretty sure he's out of the country on rotation right now (not that she's keeping tabs). Scott was her first love, if she can even allow herself to use such a soft word (she can practically feel her mother frowning at the thought). First loves (and first lots of other things too) are hard to let go of. But the world is an unforgiving place, and eventually Allison had to come to terms with the fact that she is an Argent and there will always be things, certain responsibilities, that are expected of her. Scott didn't quite understand her obligations, after-all, as he put it, "my Dad moved for my Mom in a heartbeat," like she should just transfer, just like that, like she could move from ART to L.A. with no repercussions. And the implication, that he wanted to hold on to her _forever_ , scared her too. She wasn't sure what she was more afraid of, having Scott all to herself or never really having him entirely. Dating someone that Drifted was _complicated_. Scott and his brother were... _close_. And not even in a weird Dune way or anything, but still, she's heard stories. Not to be pessimistic (who mother would call it being "realistic"), but spouses of Rangers ended up widows and widowers more often than not, and well...there isn't a high Ranger/non-Ranger marriage rate for a reason.

 

The lift arrives and Allison takes it nine stories up, shaking her past personal troubles from her thoughts and focusing on the subject at hand; Deucalion. Deucalion is something of a shining star at ART, known for being both highly compatible and highly reasonable, two extremely desirable traits in a Ranger. Allison has only spoken to him a couple of times, he's about ten years older than her, and both their works keep them quite busy, but she's always liked him. He's kind and soft-spoken, far from the pompous asshole type of Ranger that is far too common in the Jaeger Program. Even her grandfather--Marshall Argent--who's known to not like anyone has always praised Deucalion's abilities. If she were less professional she might admit that the ache in her stomach is from the sight of Deucalion's blood on her mother's shoes this morning and not from the elevator lurching to a sudden stop.

The Marshall is waiting for her in the conference room, head bowed in quiet conversation with his second-in-command. Marshall Pentecost greets her with a nod and Hercules Hansen dismisses himself, leaving the board room as she takes a seat at the table. Not a moment later there's a knock at the door, announcing the Head of Medical's arrival. Allison tells herself she's not nervous, this is simply routine, but that is far from the truth. It is not every day that she has to handle business dealings entirely on her own, it's not every day that one of her team is in the hospital with _life-threatening_ injuries, and it's not every day that she has pretend that she's a totally together professional in front of her ex-boyfriend's _mother_. She takes a deep breath and gives a tight smile to the Marshall, letting him know she's ready to begin when he is. She's just a liaison, she tells herself, but that doesn't stop her job from being ridiculously stressful. "Don't shoot the messenger," is a phrase for a reason.

 

"Hello Allison," Melissa says with a kind smile, sitting in the seat to Allison's right. She's wearing fresh scrubs and Allison tries not to linger on the reason why. Her hair is tied back in a bun and she looks entirely too pretty for the tail end of a twelve-hour shift.

 

"Hello Doctor," Allison says in reply, and it's not that she wants to come off as distant, it's just that she doesn't trust herself to navigate the many syllables of Mcall-Stilinski at this early hour.

 

"Miss Argent," Stacker Pentecost says, addressing Allison and drawing her attention, "Would you like to begin?", and it's not a question, not coming from the Marshall. Oddly enough, for all his medals and manners, he's leagues less intimidating than her own grandfather. It must be the kind eyes. Or the fact that she can see the background picture on his ipad is clearly a family photo.

 

She brings up Deucalion's file on her own ipad, along with the notes detailing the incident from this morning, "Yes, this morning our second-in-command, General Argent--my father--(she interjects, so as to avoid the confusion caused by all the superiors in ART having the same last name) entered central control at the end of his shift and encountered Edin Deucalion, one of our Rangers. He was disoriented and bleeding," She takes a deep breath, pausing and staring at the photo included in the file, "My father tried to keep him conscious and performed first aid to control the bleeding until the medical team arrived. They oversaw transporting Deucalion to the helipad, and then medevac worked on stabilizing him on the journey over." Melissa nods along approvingly as she speaks, evaluating each step for medical appropriateness. There are protocols in place for emergencies, of course, but it is still fortunate when everything works according to plan. It was ten minutes from the time Chris discovered Deucalion in the control room to the time the helicopter doors closed, and the paramedics estimated that Deucalion had probably not been injured more than five minutes before that. The quick response time improved Edin's odds significantly, but there was still a lot of risk involved with a head injury, and always triple the risk when the injured party was a Ranger.

 

"Did your father or the paramedics estimate what caused the injury?" Pentecost asks in a level voice, and he and Melissa exchange a look that has Allison pursing her lips in thought, curious as to what they're not telling her.

 

"The injury was intense impact, high trauma, like when someone hits the doorframe in a car accident. The paramedics said maybe a burst pipe or broken steam valve would have caused similar injuries," Shatterdomes are hazardous places, and not all injuries are sustained during drops, "My father said there wasn't enough blood in the control room, so they'll inspect the nearest corridors to find where the accident took place."

There's a pause after she finishes her preliminary notes, so she takes the chance to ask, "Is Deucalion...is he still stable?"

 

"Oh honey," Melissa says sympathetically, only now realizing that Allison hadn't been updated once she'd landed, "He's out of surgery and his vitals and brain activity look good. He has a moderate concussion but the swelling didn't require a craniotomy so recovery will be much easier, " then, realizing that maybe that didn't sound as reassuring to a non-doctor as it does to her, continues, "It's mostly soft-tissue damage, fully recoverable. There will probably be a few long-term effects, but nothing functionally debilitating. When he wakes up we will have a fuller picture of his over-all health."

When Melissa finishes speaking she pats Allison on the arm in a comforting manner and Allison lets out a deep breath. Ever since her mom awoke her this morning--with a grim look on her face and blood on her shoes--she's been expecting the worst. To hear that Edin will not only _live_ but will....eventually...be something like _okay_ is far better news than she could have hoped to hear.

 

"I'm glad to hear that," Allison says with a relieved smile, and clasps her shaking hands, "Is there a projected recovery time? I'm sure our medical staff can handle out-patient aftercare for long-term recovery."

 

It's then that Melissa and Stacker shoot each other another of those "looks" and Allison _knows_ there's something they're not telling her, "What is that I'm missing?" she says, trying not to sound confrontational, but also trying to not sound too plaintive. She can hear her mother's voice in her head telling her to demand answers, to take what these publicly-employed ingrates are keeping from her, but she's only been a liaison for a year, she's still figuring out the line between being professional and being a doormat, and besides, her mother's authoritarian manner of intimidating people into giving her what she wants has never been Allison's style anyway.

 

Regardless, she's entirely unprepared for Melissa's reply. Allison isn't sure what crucial piece of information she was expecting, but "This was not an accident," is _not_ it. She opens her mouth, squints her eyes in muddled confusion, looks to Stacker, looks to Melissa, then realizes she doesn't have an appropriate response at the ready and snaps her mouth shut.

 

"What," she says eloquently at the same time Pentecost says, "This is news to you," in that nonjudgemental Dad-voice of his and she shakes her head, not to disagree, but to try and make sense of it all. How did she miss this? As in, how did it not occur to her _at all_? Isn't she supposed to consider all the possibilities? And more pressing than her inner pity party concerning her lapse of competence is the fact that _this was not an_ _accident_ _what the fuck?_ Her mind races through possibilities of pipes bursting and post-Drift freak accidents and all she can see is the red on her mother's shoes and  _someone in **her** Shatterdome did that?_ _Someone_ , an actual person,is responsible because  _this was not an accident_.

 

Allison pauses, thoughts finally caught with the present, "Are you saying that we have an attempted murderer in our 'dome?"

 

"We're saying that, based on the physical evidence it is prudent that we investigate this highly probable avenue," the Marshall replies diplomatically.

 

Melissa leans over and rubs Allison's back, ever the mother even when over-seeing the medical department of an entire Shatterdome. Allison would kick herself for taking the comfort when Deucalion is so much worse off, if she weren't so grateful for it, "There are protocols that have to be followed, in situations like this," she says kindly, and Allison wonders if they've had to follow them before. She wonders if this sort of thing is common for the other Shatterdomes. She hasn't had to handle anything remotely criminal in the eleven months she's worked as ART's legal liaison.  _I guess there's a first time for everything,_ Allison thinks morbidly.

 

So she pulls herself together, maybe not as quickly as her mother would like, but quick enough. If one of her Rangers can survive a traumatic head injury then she sure as hell can do the paper work necessary to facilitate an investigation. The safety and well-being of every person in her Shatterdome is her first priority. And she will do whatever it takes to rectify the situation.

 

"Alright," says Allison, reopening Deucalion's file and addressing the Marshall, "Where do we begin?"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as much as I absolutely love writing this story, writing a fic and getting no comments is depressing as hell, so if there isn't significant interest shown in this chapter I'm going to put this story on hiatus until I've finished my other projects
> 
> so if you're reading please leave a comment <3


	10. hold your breath (where will you be waking up tomorrow?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for all the comments! I'm glad that you guys are enjoying it! :D

Jackson & Danny [L.A. Shatterdome]

 

Allison is in the cafeteria, resting her head in her hands and trying to not cry into her watered down coffee, when Danny and Jackson walk past for breakfast. It's nearly midday, but it's breakfast for them since they're coming off a late shift. Jackson nudges Danny as subtly as possible and jerks his head in the direction of Allison's table.

 

"Wonder what's up with her?" Danny wonders aloud, raising an eyebrow curiously before reaching for a fruit cup. He grabs a granola parfait for Jackson, dropping it onto his best friend's plate.

 

"Dude, she chose a side, remember?" Jackson says, acting as if he doesn't care. He does. When Allison and Scott were dating she and Jackson got to be rather close friends. They saw a lot of each other when Allison visited their Shatterdome between drops, enough to realize they had a lot of non-jaeger-related things in common. Things like sense of humor and taste in music, and an affinity for Nutella. The thing is Jackson likes Allison. Like really _really_ likes her. Like cares about her as a person and all that jazz. He was never going to attempt to date anyone out of the Drift, but he can see why Scott thought it was worth a shot. He thinks Scott is a brave man for attempting it. _Stupid_ , but brave. Jackson will never admit to it. Just like he won't admit to _missing_ Allison's presence in their lives. Just like he will never admit to a lot of things.

 

"You still like her," Danny says, and it's teasing but they both know it's not a joke.

 

"Of course I like her, but her family's fucked up, that whole Shatterdome is fucked up," Jackson says, and Danny hums in agreeance.

 

"It's like Stockholm Syndrome, you know? Like, loyalty before happiness and all that jazz," Danny says, like _give her a break_.

 

Jackson, contrary to popular belief, is capable of sympathy. Sometimes he even chooses to employ it. But he's been places where there was no light and no hope and when he was offered an out he didn't hesitate to take it. There's no one he judges harsher than those who've failed at things he's beaten.

 

"Empathy was never my strongest suit," he hisses in Danny's ear, and Danny hears Jackson's plea that he drop the subject.

 

"Keep telling yourself that," he says instead, meeting Jackson's stare until his partner turns away.

 

"You're lucky I love you more than life itself, Mahealani," Jackson says as he starts to walk towards Allison's table, and he can't really keep the fondness out of his voice.

 

"And to think, you were almost denied the opportunity," Danny says faux-mournfully, throwing an arm around his best friend's shoulders. Due to high demand, and low supply, there was something of a black market surrounding the current recruitment of Drift-compatible individuals. Before Knifehead applicants came to the PPDC, not the other way around, but after... Unless a Drift-compatible person happened to be practically born into the Shatterdome life, such as the case with the Stilinski-McCall brothers, and Chuck and Mako, or _literally_ born into the Shatterdome life, such as one Timí Jens Boyd, then it was up to the Admirals, and the recruitment officers acting under them, to acquire potential new Rangers, through whatever means deemed necessary, no matter how aggressive or illegal. Danny's case was pretty simple; his youthful foray into crime put him on the radar of people in high places and his name was passed along to the nearest Shatterdome. Because he was an American citizen--and a minor--at the time of his recruitment he was allowed to have a parent present when he signed his contract with the PPDC. It also protected him from being scouted by any foreign Shatterdome, whether private or public, until he turned eighteen, had he _not_ signed with them. It was only after he made it through orientation and was due to begin Round 1 at the Academy that he found out that A.R.T. had had a file on him, and had been on the verge of making him an offer when the PPDC found him. Why--or _how--_ A.R.T.'s team always seemed to have first dibs on Drift-compatible individuals still remained a mystery to Danny. All he knows is that they're shady as hell, and he's glad he ended up where he did.

 

"What do you think happened?" Jackson asks, referring to the ever perplexing file that A.R.T. decided not to pursue.

 

Danny looks from Allison's tense form to Jackson's curious face and shakes his head, grateful, "I think I got lucky."

 

* * *

 

The Beckets [Anchorage Shatterdome, aka "The Icebox"]

 

"We gonna drift, or are we gonna dance?" Yancy asks, smirking at his younger brother Raleigh as said brother picks himself up off the floor.

 

"Fuck your nano' upgrades bro," Raleigh says, faking offense, but the wide smile on his face gives him away.

 

Catching his breath, Raleigh takes his position of the matt. Him and Yance have just finished their routine two-hour workout, and they like to end things with a sparring session in the Kwoon. Yancy, as usual, is kicking Raleigh's ass. Has been kicking his ass since Raleigh was fourteen and Yancy decided the pros of teaching him self-defense outweighed the cons of destroying Raleigh's self-esteem. Now Raleigh outweighs Yancy. Raleigh is twenty-four. Yancy doesn't look a day over twenty-three (and never will). But Yancy is still his big brother, and Raleigh is still on the floor with a staff to his throat.

 

"I love Australia," Yancy says controversially, like that's what they'd been talking about, "The Marshall told you that's where we're headed, right kid?" it'd been an emergency change of plans, Admiral Pentecost deciding to pull Team Ku Alere from rotation. It had been an executive decision to keep L.A.'s offense team in their foreign port, but a necessary one due to A.R.T. being down one Drift-team in the aftermath of Deucalion's assault. Yancy doesn't know the details, he tries to keep away from blood and violence--can't stomach it after Knifehead--but he does know a _human_ put Ranger Deucalion in critical condition, _not_ a monster from the sea. It all seems a bit wrong, that humans can still be so cruel to one another when there are _literally_  creatures from another world trying to destroy their planet. It should surprise him, the depths to which humanity can still sink, but it doesn't. The Knifehead incident, well _dying_  actually, knocked every last bit of idealism and innocence out of Yancy. He's been chewed up and spat out by an alien. He's died and come back to life. He's not sure anything could surprise him anymore.

 

"Hell yeah," Raleigh agrees enthusiastically, "Makes told me earlier today, texted me at three in the morning actually, all 'oops, wrong time zone, but I'm so cute you'll forgive me'," Raleigh says with a laugh, smiling like an idiot because his fiance' _exists_ and he's so besotted. Yancy would probably find their over-the-top sweetness kind of disgusting if he didn't experience all the myriad of ways that Raleigh loves Mako (and Mako loves Raleigh) through the Drift. If nothing else, Drifting gives you a keen sense of empathy, despite yourself. Yancy knows what being in love with Mako Mori is like almost too well.

 

"D'you know who our drop partners are gonna be? She wouldn't tell me," Raleigh says, feinting forward to tag Yancy on the shoulder. Yancy lets him, only to step to the side and catch him in the middle of his back when he follows through.

 

"Dewer's Bane?" Yancy answers, trying to remember. He can practically feel his thoughts circumventing the patch of grey matter that never came back online, "They're American, L.A.-based, they've got good stats, even though they've only been active duty for about a year,"

 

"Dewer's Bane?" Raleigh repeats, impressed, "That's an apt name if I ever heard one,"

 

"I know, right?" Yancy says with a little laugh, "I'm a little jealous,"

 

"Says the nerd that insisted we name our beloved Jaeger after an engine from WWII," Raleigh smirks and Yancy taps him upside the head with the end of his staff, "Ow!"

 

"That didn't hurt, you big baby," Yancy chides Raleigh lightly as his brother pouts, "This is revenge for me being four inches taller than you, isn't it?"

 

"Yes! It is!" Yancy says emphatically before rolling into a somersault to avoid Raleigh's next strike. Raleigh is ready when Yancy comes back up, tagging his older brother on the shoulder before Yancy grabs him around the knees, pulling Raleigh down onto the matt for a draw. Even after Knifehead, after six years of drops and kills, after months of rehabilitation and countless surgeries, they're still as in sync as they were the first time they stepped into the conn-pod.

 

"So those crazy kids from the L.A. Shatterdome, huh? Aren't they the ones that're always make the news for some controversy or another?" Raleigh says, leaning on his staff for balance, now remembering seeing their team name on the bottom of a newsreel (or several). He and Yancy are a bit isolated, being up in Anchorage as they are, and they've been so occupied with getting back to where they were two years ago--their entire attention wrapped up in each other--that if it weren't for Mako, and occasional drops, they wouldn't have much interaction with the outside world at all. But he knows he's heard their names--Stiles and Scott, right and left, respectively--in conversation with Mako a couple of times.

 

"But they're a defense team, they must be if they're going to be _our_ defense team, how do they even _have_ controversy?" Yancy says, thinking out loud.

 

"Fuck if I know," Raleigh says, "Probably has something to do with the whole _each generation of Rangers gets younger than the last_  thing," he shrugs, "plus their parents both work for the PPDC, and that never looks good, you know what kind of heat the Marshall and Herc have gotten in the past..."

 

Yancy raises his eyebrows, "Oh, like, people think their parents signed them over to the PPDC before they really had a chance?"

 

Raleigh nods, and then laughs coldly, "Hah, as if our parents had anything to do with any of this," gesturing to the Kwoon around them.

 

"Well, they kind of did," Yancy says, and he wants to shrug on old habit--but remembering the new muscle between his shoulder and his rib cage is always a little too stiff--decides to forgo it. When their mom died and their dad abandoned him, Jazmine, and Raleigh before they were really old enough to properly fend for themselves it left them, and by _them_ he means _him_ , with few options. If Yancy had to do it all over again he would do it just the same, but the keyword still being _had_.

 

"We gave ourselves over," Raleigh says, but he shrugs where Yancy cannot when he continues, "we didn't really have anywhere else to go,"

 

"A choice made in desperation is still a choice," Yancy says, and he will stand by that until his dying day, has seen it come and gone--technically speaking--and is still standing by it. If there's one thing he will hold them--himself, Raleigh, Gipsy, Mako, the whole fucking lot--to, it's that they are not victims of the PPDC's bullshit Draft Act. He chose this, to be this, and if _when_ he and Raleigh die for this, he wants it to be on his own honor.

 

"Did it feel like a choice when you were eighteen," Raleigh says, and Yancy doesn't answer what he can't admit.

 

"At least I was asked," he says, covering Raleigh's left hand with his artificial one and giving it a comforting squeeze. He knows it's just pings on the receptor pressed against the sensory quadrant of his right hemisphere, but he swears he can feel the warmth of Raleigh's skin.

 

"Sometimes it's nice to be asked, even if saying no isn't really an option," Yancy says and Raleigh gets it, he really does. He's drifted with Yancy too many times not to. He threads the fingers of his taped and calloused hand through Yancy's translucent ones and squeezes back.

 

* * *

 

Mako Mori [Tokyo Shatterdome]

 

Mako sits at the top of the hangar stairs and holds her head in her hands. She's been out of the Drift for two weeks and she can still feel Chuck's anger burning through her veins. It's different from her own. Hers is this inferno inside her, this fire that burns so hot it would consume her if she didn't direct it, attempt to control it, for her sensei and for her own honor. She can't be a person, let alone a Ranger, if she's victim to the wills of her own feelings. She's had no choice but to burn since that day in Tokyo nearly ten years before, but she's learned to contain the blaze. She lost everything that day, and though she's gained so much since, nothing will truly soothe terror a little girl felt, hiding in an alley, waiting for death. A bitter voice in the back of her mind says _Chuck didn't lose everything_. Sure, he lost his mum in the initial attack, and that would traumatize anyone, but what would she give to see her sword-master father one more time? How much of her anger would she sacrifice to have just one of her first parents survive Onibaba's attack? There are not words to justly describe her love, her admiration, for her sensei, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't sometimes look at Chuck avoiding his father's gaze and think _how dare_ _you_.

 

Sometimes she finds his anger petty, for lack of a better word. He's not as angry as her. His driving emotion is hurt. Hurt for his mother, his Uncle, his father. Hurt, and fear, that Hieri might take his father's love away from him. Fear that he might die and the world might forget his name. And his anger just lies on top of all that hurt, like icing on a cake; it's shallow, not foundational. And when she feels his anger inside of her it's a foreign and familiar thing all at once. For someone who lives in her head often enough, sometimes she just doesn't understand him. Like how he can shun his cousin Hieri's existence. Hieri is technically his brother, though she doesn't press the issue, and through adoption and marriage, her brother too. The part of her that flares up every time she sees the rift between Chuck and his father, _aches_  at the chasm between Chuck and Hieri. In her first life, before Onibaba, she was an only child, though secretly she often longed for a brother. Now she has two, and it's up to her to reconcile herself to the fact that they live on two different continents and barely speak to each other.

 

There's a photo she keeps in the inner pocket of her Ranger jacket, and it lays right against her heart when she zips it closed. It's of Hieri and Timí and the family in Sydney. She keeps the shoe sensei returned to her on the top shelf of her bookshelf, as a symbol of her commitment, as a centerpiece of pride. It's something she's allowed to celebrate--her first family--and how far she's come in her quest to avenge them. But this, this she has to hide, pressed against her heart, with only a few layers of clothing in between. A photo taken in the hospital, about six months after Herc signed the adoption papers, back when Chuck wouldn't talk to his dad he was so pissed, and Hieri didn't talk at all. Hieri's sitting on Erica's hospital bed, Erica holding the tiny thing that is now known as Timí Boyd, swaddled in a pink blanket. Boyd has one arm around Erica's shoulders, a proud smile on his face, and the other around Hieri, who's smiling hesitantly at the camera like he's not sure who these people are or how he acquired them. It's the moment they all became a family; Boyd, Erica, and Hieri. Mom, Dad, and big brother Hieri, all gathered to welcome little Timí Jens Boyd into the world, and Mako thinks it's the best photo she's ever taken.

 

She loves Chuck, but sometimes she doesn't like the person he is. Sometimes she doesn't like the fact that they're so Drift-compatible. Doesn't like what it says about her. But it is what it is, and she's lost enough to appreciate what she has, even if it's an extremely volatile step-brother, an autistic adopted brother, and an adorable baby cousin that no one knows quite how to acknowledge. Her problem is that she _wants_ to acknowledge Timí, wants to hold her and see her grow, wants to show the techs pictures and make them coo over her. She wants her family to be _whole_ , wants Chuck to get over his inferiority complex enough to be able to be in the same room as Hieri without getting that look on his face like he's plotting to murder everyone. She wants Timí to be the flower girl in her wedding, and wants Herc to not look ill every time he looks at Erica. She wants... _a lot_ but she figures, hey, it's the end of the world, so what's the harm in it?

 

Mako twirls her engagement ring--a white gold band, inlaid with diamonds--around her left ring finger and stares out at the hangar, deep in thought. Until the wedding she can only wear it when she's off-duty, but she loves it. Raleigh told her, when he proposed, that the diamonds were made from the ashes of Tokyo, post-Onibaba; there're three in a row, one for her mother, one for her father, and one for her. It's tragic and romantic and even though she knows Raleigh traded half of Spinejackal's brain on the black market to get it she loves him all the more for the sweet gesture. And it is _sweet_ because it's from Raleigh and how could it not be? Only that boy could make diamonds made literally from death into a romantic overture. He's the warmest, gentlest person she's ever met, and she's eternally grateful that she _did_  meet him, in all the chaos of the world. He and Yancy had seriously considered leaving the Jaeger Program in the aftermath of Knifehead, understandably, and it was only when the brothers came to L.A. for physical therapy that she and Raleigh were introduced. Six months later he proposed. Raleigh said that they could get married whenever and wherever Mako wanted. He even said that if she wanted to get married mid-drop it'd be no problem because Tendo was already an ordained minister ( _of course he is_ , she'd replied with a snort, not surprised in the least), they'd only have to wait for their rotations to overlap.

 

 

She had told him that she wanted to wait until their current assignments were finished, that way they could get stationed somewhere together after the wedding, but it's not her only reason for waiting. She knows Hieri is in the arduous process of being matched with a partner and she doesn't want to add to his current stress by springing a new member of the family on him. She wants to wait until he's past his first drop because she loves Hieri, is protective of him in her own distant way, and wants him to be settled in his new assignment before she gives him another change to deal with. She feels a kinship with Hieri, because he too lost his first parents to violent circumstances, but she loves him because he is unlike her. He has so much less, and in some ways has lost so much more, and yet she is the angry one. She's not sure what he Drifts on, but she knows it isn't an inferno of rage. She finds it impressive...and frightening. Because what will she be, when the rage is gone? What will she feel like inside when she is truly happy? Will she even feel like herself at all? She wants to be happy, but she wants to be herself more. And in the same vein that she's looking forward to her wedding, in some ways it seems more daunting than the next drop.

 

Mako plays with the ring on her left hand and thinks, not for the first time, that maybe everything would be simpler if the world really did end. 

 

* * *

 

 

The Argents [Argent-Republic Shatterdome, aka "A.R.T."]

 

Chris Argent feels like he's been awake for three days and at 70 hours and two doses of modafinil he nearly has. Halos are starting to appear at the edges of his vision and he swears he can still smell the copper of Deucalion's blood under his fingernails. The floor of his office still has a red tint to it, but he's pretty sure that it's just in his head. 

 

His daughter is staying at that hell of a public Shatterdome, his _highly respected_ private institution is under investigation, and his father is giving him a disapproving stare. To be fair, his father has been giving him that look since he was twelve years old. Gerard Argent stands with his arms crossed behind him, the rigid stance of someone ex-military, and Chris grips the edge of his desk where the chrome is starting to rust until his knuckles turn white. Kate was always Gerard's favorite. Kate with her fanatical devotion; to the family--to her father's word--Kate, with her go-getter attitude (and her political arson plots). Kate, with her long dirty blonde hair and her eyes just a shade darker than Chris'. It turns out, ironically, that Kate's eyes weren't the only thing a shade or two darker than her brother's. Kate was never one for laws, even before the end of the world. Chris, on the other hand, always liked to stay on the legal side of things. He calls it morality, his father calls it a disappointment. Chris likes to imagine a future where the few morals that survived his childhood aren't tested on a daily basis. Gerard likes to imagine a world in which the first Kaiju attack claimed Chris' life, instead of his wife's.

 

Allison is distraught over the whole ordeal (but is doing her best not to show it), Gerard is furious with the current situation (and is not trying to hide it), and Victoria is taking it in as much stride as she ever does whenever she finds something distasteful, with an assertive stance, pursed lips, and a look to kill.

 

Sometimes, being Chris Argent is so exhausting.

 

There's an inkling, a feeling underneath his skin, that Chris really really doesn't want to know what happened. But he has to find out. For the sake of his reputation, for the protection of his family, for the small and nearly dead part inside of him he likes to call his conscience. Allison's safety and happiness is always his number one priority, and the sooner he handles this matter the sooner she'll be able to return home. He tries to focus on that, his love for his daughter as his motivating force, and he tries to forget that he likes Deucalion, that Deucalion is a good man. It's better to think of his daughter's smiling face, and his wish to have her back under his roof, than think of the victim of a crime that happened under it as well. There are interlocking rings of coffee-cup stains on the surface of his desk, scattered between piles of official paperwork, and he has a sneaking suspicion that Marshall Pentecost would never stand for this shit.

 

"We're under investigation for attempted murder, Dad," Chris says.

 

"The investigation is pending," Gerard says with a scowl tossing a file on Chris' desk with a slap, "the only matter you should concern yourself with is finding a replacement pilot."

 

Chris can see a handful of pictures slide out of the folder, fanning across the blotter. Of the extremely low percentage of the population that has Drift-potential (roughly .1 percent of the general population), only a much smaller percentage of those will ever see the inside of a Jaeger. Various reasons, such as age, health issues, mental issues (some preexisting conditions make it dangerous for certain individuals to drift together, and drifting together can make some disorders worse), and religion ( _of all things_ , Chris thinks exasperatedly), cause potential rangers to not make the cut. To say that the remaining group (which is, statistically speaking, something like 1% of 15% of .1% of the general population) are highly sought after would be an understatement. Chris doesn't know exactly how Gerard seems to have unlimited access to a number of them at all times. He also knows better than to ask.

 

"You can't be serious," Chris says, deadpan, looking from the file to Gerard's stony face, "Deucalion's projected to make a full recovery, and we have reserve teams for a reason," and he thinks  _the sheets haven't even grown cold_. 

 

"We found some kids in Australia," Gerard says, talking over him and completely ignoring the second part of his sentence, "Their soccer coach tipped us off, it looks like they've got potential."

 

"How do you know he's telling the truth?" Chris asks, knowing there's no use in reminding Gerard that using scouters is illegal.

 

"He's as honest as he needs to be," Gerard assures him--which means there's _a lot_ of money involved--and Chris could sigh for how many laws they've already broken.

 

He should be thinking of his lost humanity, he should be thinking of his mother's grave and wondering why he hasn't done more to make her proud, but what he thinks is _what the fuck is in the water in Australia?_ , and what he says is, "Define 'kids'?"

 

"The oldest is seventeen, the youngest is fifteen," Gerard says as Chris opens the first folder and is greeted with a photo of blond hair and blue eyes and sweet jesus the kid is too young and cute to be readily identified as a boy or a girl. The name under the picture is masculine though and when he flips the photo over M--7st.--63" is written on the back. The full date of birth indicates that he's two weeks away from his fifteenth birthday. 

 

"What about guardians?" he asks, glossing over the fact that his father has already fudged the ages a bit to try and appease Chris' ethical whinging. It means he must want something from him, and as he opens the second file (65", 8.9st., male, a little under a week away from his seventeenth birthday) he thinks he knows what it is. When Gerard says, "They won't be a problem," his stomach sinks. He now  _knows_ what it is.

 

"We're not kidnapping anyone, especially across ocean borders," Chris says as he reaches the last profile and is surprised to note that, firstly, the boy is actually fifteen and secondly, that he's part Maori. For the past decade scientists have been collecting empirical data on the race and ethnicity of individuals known to be highly Drift-compatible in an attempt to isolate and understand the biological and psychological factors that result in such an ability. Theorists in the medical research community are divided; nearly half supporting the theory that Drift-compatibility is an inheritable trait, like eye color or mental illness, and the other half theorizing that it is a result of environment, with regional location playing a bigger role in causation than bloodlines. Chris, if anyone asked, would say that he thinks it's a mix of the two. However, this little boy (64"--7.5st.--M--brown eyes, black hair) showing signs of Drift-sensitivity certainly lends credence to the theory of genetics over environment, due to being of Maori descent--not unlike Team Ku Alere's fairly infamous left-sider Danny Mahealani--despite being from an entirely different country from the Hawaiian-born L.A.-based Ranger.

 

"If we can convince one to sign, the rest will follow; you know the collective policy," Gerard says, and when he says "we" he means _Chris_.

 

Chris looks up from the folder to ask, "Doesn't Australia have first dibs?" just as Victoria enters his office. She leans her hip against the corner of his desk, bowing her head to read the profiles over his shoulder.

 

"You and I both know Australia's draft policy leaves a lot to be desired," she says and Chris thinks  _kidnapping_ ,  _what we are talking about is_ kidnapping.

 

" _Chris_ ," Victoria says in warning, and he wonders how her devotion never wavers. Her devotion to the family, to the Shatterdome, to the cause that's bigger than them all ( _religion_ , of all things, he thinks, and it's irony on top of irony until they're all dead). Thinks,  _Victoria has always been such a natural Argent_ , whereas he's just a soldier, always a step too many behind his father.

 

Yesterday he was rinsing his top pilot's blood off his shoes. Today he was fending off reporters and calls from the L.A. Marshall alike. Tomorrow he's going to kidnap three children, the eldest of which is still years younger than his own.

 

"Chris," Victoria says again, and it would sound soft, almost plaintive, coming from anyone who wasn't his wife.

 

Chris closes the file, hiding bright eyes and smiling faces behind plain manila. He can sleep on the plane.

 

* * *

 

 

Hieronymus Hansen [Sydney Shatterdome]

 

Hieri wakes at four in the morning and sits up in the dark. He can feel something, like the tendrils of a Drift, even though it's been six hours since he's been in the Kwoon. Trials are temporarily on hold--for Hieri and the recruits to both recuperate--and as much as he dreads going back--dreads being put on display--he's fucking drumming with anticipating of finding his partner. The exo-structure of his soon-to-be Jaeger will be finished this week, and the internal wiring will be completed within the month, right on schedule. Despite the fact that he hardly ever dares to let himself hope, on some level he _knows_ his Drift partner is out there, and he can't wait to find them. And he wants, oh _how_ he wants, so desperately as he's never wanted anything before.

 

The idea of not being alone anymore is intoxicating, and he clings to it. Clings to it like he clings to the whisper of Drift still edging at his conscious. He can feel it slipping through his fingers like water but it's familiar and he wants to hold onto it. He's half asleep and he thinks he can almost _see_ the inside of the person on the other end's brain. It's ghost drifting and he's never even been inside of a Jaeger before, but he knows that on the other end is his partner. He feels tears on his face and they're not his own. Can feel an invisible weight pressing on his chest and he gasps at a breath.

 

He's fully awake now. The feeling is gone. He reaches out in the dark as if he can pull it back and feels a shiver run up his arm as if a phantom limb, as if someone on the opposite side of the city is doing the exact same thing.

 

He shudders. His Drift partner is in Sydney. It's only a matter of time now.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can anyone guess who Hieri's partner is going to be? What do you guys think of the playlist? :D


End file.
